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American Triptych

THREE ‘JOHN SEDGES’ NOVELS

The Townsman
Voices In The House
The Long Love

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY • NEW YORK

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be
reproduced in any form without permission. Published by
The John Day Company, 62 West 45th Street, New York 36,
N.Y., and on the same day in Canada by Longmans, Green &
Company, Toronto.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Foreword

Some years ago I woke one morning to find myself strangely oppressed.
I felt suddenly that I was no longer a free individual. I had been' cast
In a mold. I had written so many books about Chinese people that I had
become known as a writer only about China, This was natural enough and
nobody’s fault. When I began to write I knew no people intimately except
the Chinese. My entire life had been spent in China and beyond that in
Asia, in midstream, however, I had transferred myself to the West and
to my own country, the United States. Soon, since any writer writes out
of his everyday environment, I began, however tentatively, to write about
American people. I became thereby someone else.

This someone else, who now was also I, for the old self, the Asian self,
continued to exist and will always continue, was, I repeat, oppressed. The
oppression was the result of a determination on the part of my readers,
sometimes loving, sometimes critical, to insist that there must be no other
me than the one they had always known; that is to say, the Asian me.
But here was the new American me, eager to explore and adventure among
my own people. To provide freedom for this American me, pseudonymity
was the answer. The writer must have a new name. I chose the name of
John Sedges, a simple one, and masculine because men have fewer handi-
caps in our society than women have, in writing as well as in other
professions.

My first John Sedges novel was The Townsman. It is a long book, a
story of the West, Kansas in scene, to which state I had made many quiet
visits. I was pleased when Kansans praised its authenticity. Its hero is a
modest fellow who refuses to ride wild horses, be a cowboy, shoot pistols
into the air, kill his enemies, find gold in any hills, destroy Indians, or
even get drunk. He is content merely to become the solid founder of a
'city. The novel was well received by .critics and sold to some tens of thou-
sands of readers. It thus proved itself : as a- successful first novel by an
unlmown'Wrto^ ■

■ Four ' Other novels , were published under the name John Sedges, and
guesses .became rampant ■ as to the author. No secrets in this world are
kept forever. Somebody always knows and telfe. And my two selves were

FOREWORD

viii

begiiming to merge. I was by now at home in my own country, my roots
were digging deep, and I was becoming increasingly familiar with my own
people. The protection of John' Sedges was neither so necessary nor so
effective as it had been. In Europe the John Sedges novels were openly
sold as Pearl Buck books. I was moving toward freedom. The shield was
no longer useful.

So John Sedges has served his purpose and may now be discarded and
laid away in the silver foil of memory. I declare my independence and
my determination to write as I please in a free country, choosing my
material as I find it. People are people whether in Asia or America, as
everybody knows or ought to know, and for me the scene is merely the
background for human antics. Readers will still be the critics, of course,
but I shall hope and strive to please and to amuse. Why else should books
be written?

Pearl S. Buck

From the window of his room in the attic Jonathan Goodliffe could
see, if the day were fair, the white sails of ships upon the Irish Sea. The
day must be translucently fair, the sky blue and not washed with the pale
English mists, so that the sea could be deep blue beneath it, and then the
son could glitter upon the sails. This was his judgment of the day.

The cottage was near enough to the city of Blackpool for him to have
walked there to the seacoast if he liked, for he was fifteen years old. His
brother Edward, three years older than he, had a job in a ship’s chandlery
and walked home from there often enough on a Sunday, or even on a
weekday in the evening. But he and Jonathan were different. Edward as
a boy could put his hoe down any day in the middle of the afternoon and
without a word go away. Jonathan could not. He must stay until the work
he had allotted for himself was done, and by then it was always evening.
He could have gone to Blackpool in the evening, but he had seen how
his mother fretted because Edward went too often in the years when he
was at home, and now he had not the heart to add to her trouble. So after
his supper he helped with the dishes, and then he sat down in the sitting
room with her and' the younger children. Sometimes he read aloud to her,
if his father were not there, and sometimes he played games with the chil-
dren until they went to bed, and then talked with her, trying to think of
what might interest her.

There were four of these children younger than himself. He knew his
mother had not wanted the last' one, thou^ never had she said one word
to him about the children she had. So far- as he might have known from
her, the vchiid waS' simply there .one day. She was so dainty in her speech,
so shy, so small and exquisite, in her person, that' these great children she

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

bore one after the other seemed to have nothing to do with her. He was
glad she did not speak of them. He could pretend they had nothing to
do with her, though he was fond of them, too. But so sensitive was he
to every look In her delicate face that it seemed to him he could fee! the
very instant when her being began to divide itself. He could feel her spirit,
half -distressed, half-withdrawn, as her body set upon its task again. When
this had happened the last time, he had gone quickly upstairs to his room
^and burst into tears. He, had cried silently and deeply for a few moments,
without knowing why. While he was crying he heard her step coming
slowly up the stairs, and he rushed to draw the wooden bar across hm
door. She shook the door a little when she found it locked.

„ want to make your bed, Jonathan!” she cried through the crack,
^^Fm washin’ myself,” he called back.

^^Whatever for now, after breakfast?” she cried, amazed.

scamped it afore,” he answered shortly.

He heard her breathe, “Well, I never!”

“Go on,” he shouted. “FU do my own bed today.”

She did not answer, and after a moment he heard her go down again.
But her coming had startled him out of weeping. He went to the win-
dow and stood looking out, and at that moment the last shreds of the
morning mist faded, and suddenly he saw the small flecks of white which
were the sails of ships upon the Irish Sea. The very sight of them quieted
him, as they always did. He was thankful again that, when he and Edward
divided the attic, he had chosen this side for himself. It had been accident.
No one knew that from this window the ships could be seen. He had been
excited when he saw them first, and not for days had he happened to see
them. . , .

“Come down out of there, Jonathan!” his father roared at him from
the garden patch below. “Whatever are you thinkin’ to be idlin’ this time
of day and all the work waitin’?”

He turned away from the window, sick at the very sight of his father
this morning, and rushed downstairs. In the kitchen his mother was moving
slowly about the dishes. She looked up when he came in, and he saw she
had been crying, too. He longed to hug her, but this he had not done
for too long. His father had stopped it

“Have done with kissin’ and huggin’ your mother, you great lads,” he
had ordered his two older sons. “It fair makes me sick to see it”

“Shame on you, Clyde Goodliffe!” his mother had cried, and her fair
skin had turned crimson under her yellow hair. But neither Jonathan nor
Edward had kissed her from that day.

Less than ever could he kiss her now, though he did not know why.
She was always beautiful to him, and now touching as she stood beside
the sink, so small in her little blue cotton frock. He was not tail for his
age, but already he was taller than she was.

THE TOWNSMAN "5

goin’ to plant some of them flowerin’ peas for you, Mother/^ he

blurted.

'^Tliose/’ she said gently, “not them,” But she corrected him so gently
that he did not mind. He was even glad to be corrected for something.
It made her seem more usual to him.

“Those,” he repeated obediently. She had been a teacher in a board
school before she was married, and she knew about words.

“Fll be glad to have them, son,” she said quietly. “They’re pretty, if
what I hear of them be true.”

She smiled, and suddenly he choked.

“Oh, Mother—” he muttered. She turned and looked at him. And she
flew to him, and he put his arms around her and was near crying again.

“Let me help you,” he muttered. “Let me do the heavy work. You just
call me, Mother. I’m goin’ to stay around the house more.”

“You’re my good boy,” she whispered.

They hugged each other hard. It was such a comfort to feel her in
Ms arms. But her little shoulder blades were sharp.

“You’re tMn, aren’t you, Mother?” he asked anxiously.

She drew back at this. “Not more than common,” she said. She put
back a loosened lock of her straight golden hair, and suddenly they were
both shy.

“Well, eat your food, Mother, do,” he said sternly.

“Aye—yes, I will,” she promised. She was back at the sink again, her
eyes turned away.

He had gone on to school. But he knew, and she felt his knowledge.
Ail during the long months he had done all he could to lift heavy things
and hang the clothes on the line, and every morning he spread his own
bed before he came downstairs. And sometimes he was afraid of himself
because he hated Ms father so heartily.

Yet when Maggie was born he was fond of her. He was always fond
of them, after they were bom. He had been fond of Jamie first because
it was a pleasure to have a brother younger than he so that he need not
be Edward’s only younger brother, and then he was fond of Jamie because
he was so Mi of jokes and laughing. And then Ruth was bom, and he
was fond of her because she was his flrst sister. And Arthur was delicate
from the day of his birth, and at three was still delicate, so that one could
not but grow fond of him because he was so patient and good. And Maggie
was ^ soon eight months, old, and he was. fond of her because she was so
hearty and; independent and because she was not. pretty like Ruth, and so
needed'.Ms fondness the more. , ■

; ' “A homely, woman!” his mother sighed, “She’ll have to be made up
to somehow, foi' she’ll , have a hard row to hoe,. God send she’s smart!”

: Maggie was smart' enough for anybody. At four months she had two
solid: strong white teeth, at five she sat alone, and now at eight months
.she: e,oMd;:walk;;.from,;,chair.,,. to table, ::an^ clamor. for bits from Jonathan’s

6 AMEBICAN TRIPTYCH

plate at mealtiines. He fed her secretly, proud of her abEity to eat anything*

*^You’ll give her the colic, sure!” his mother cried. ■

But nothing gave her colic. Looking into her round, plain, healthy little
face, doomed to freckles, he felt his heart grow hot with the soft warmth
which rushed out of it always for his mother and the younger children.
He and they were the real famdy, he sometimes felt. His father and Edward
.did not seem to belong to them.

And yet neither he nor the- younger chEdren possessed the power to
disturb his mother that his father did. Years ago he had learned when he
came into the house to fear, to pause and listen to whether the house were
sEent or whether he heard his father shouting, arguing, stamping up and
down the bedroom above the small parlor of which his mother was so
proud. He could never quite hear what his father was actuaEy saying when
he went into his chEiy lithe attic room. But he always went in and stood
shivering and listening to the bumbling roar of his father’s voice.

He could not hear his mother at all. The waEs of the cottage were of
stone, old and thick, and plastered again and again by many hands, and
the ceiling was close. If the house had been that one in Blackpool which
he could only vaguely remember, it would have been easy to hear any-
thing. Yet aE he could remember of that house was hearing his mother
cry out when Jamie was being born. Perhaps there had never been a
quarrel about leaving Blackpool, but he seemed to remember a quarrel
between his father and mother about it. His mother had hated the port
and the coarse sailors sauntering into the little shop she kept so clean and
neat. Wherever they moved she always opened a IMe shop somehow, in
one of the rooms. Her father had kept a draper’s shop and was well-to-do
in a smaE way, so that she had gone to school untE she was seventeen and
then had taught for three years.

It was in her father’s shop that she had met Clyde Goodliffe. Then he
had been a salesman for dry goods, and old Mr. Layton had wanted him
in the shop after they were married, since he had two girls and no son.
But it had not lasted. His Aunt Myra could not abide his father, his
mother said. There had been a tremendous quarrel, he knew, and then
his father had done something else.

His father had done almost everything. They were all used to his begin-
ning one of his lordly tales of a wonderful happening by his smacking
his lips and saying, “It was when I was a journeyman once that I saw
the most wonderful, fearful sight. . . .” Or he said, “Once when I was in
the candle and coal business, a chap thought he’d be smarter than I
was . .

But for the last ten years they had lived in this house. Clyde Goodliffe
had come and gone; had rented this land and that, and given it up in
disgust because it was too wet or too dry, too stony or too mucky; had
sold one thing and another or nothing; but his mother had kept them all
firmly in this low whitewashed cottage that was home. It stood on the

TliE TOWNSMAN

side of a Mil above the village of Dentwater, and the kitchen garden sloped
up the hill in the back, so that Jamie, digging potatoes, tried to roll : them
into the kitchen door. In 'the front she had her flowers, and on the other
side of their bit of land was the village street. Beyond Dentwater . the Ml!
flattened, then went rolling on into the levels around Blackpool.

TMs home Jonathan loved. It troubled Mm continually and sometimes
In the night frightened him to think he must leave it because he was grow-
ing. Plenty of boys left home at fifteen.

“Why for should I be feedin’ a lad of fifteen?*' Ms father grumbled.

“Give him another year at school till he’s sixteen,” Ms mother begged.
“He’s as good as a girl in the house and a wonder to help in the shop.
And Edward’s enough in that filthy Blackpool”

“Money idn’t to be found in a hole like Dentwater, though,” his father
shouted,'

“Money idn’t to be found anywhere, Clyde,” his mother replied with
a gentle firmness. “It’s got to be made.”

All Ms heart moved to his mother. But between these two who were
his parents, Jonathan Goodliffe had long since learned to keep silence,
because he knew, somehow, that in spite of all their quarreling, they loved
each other, and this love shut him out from between them. However much
Ms mother loved him, she loved Ms father more. The consciousness of it
kept Jonathan humbled and quiet, and whatever he did for his mother was
never quite enough.

On the thirteenth of January in the year 1866, at half past four in the
afternoon, he was coming home from the village school cold and hungry
for tea. If his father were not home, he and Ms mother and the small
ones would have their tea about the kitchen hearth. All day long in the
damp chili of the schoolroom he had been imagining that hour before the
fire, his knees hot, his face burning, his hands and feet warm at last, and
he drinking hot tea. If Ms father were home, tea would be set out on the
table, and he would have to take his place there and listen to Ms father’s
boisterous talk.

He plodded steadily down the cobbled street, holding an umbrella
against the windy drizzle. It was already dark, and the twenty-odd cottages
of Dentwater were lit as though night had fallen. One by one the four
older pupils of the school had stopped at these cottages until only Archie
Bainter, a boy a little younger than he, was with him. Then Archie stopped,
foo.

“Well, here I be, Jonathan,” Archie said as a light grew out of the

“So you be,” Jonathan answered. ‘T’ll be seein’ you tomorrow, Archie,”

“Well, maybe you will and maybe you won’t,” Archie said solemnly.

“Where’ll you be goin’?” Jonathan asked, amazed. He paused under the
umbrella to stare into the vagueness of Archie’s face.

8 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

^Tm sick of school,” Archie said

^ We’re all that, I reckon,” Jonathan said soberly.

‘‘Yes, but Fm goin’ to rid myself of it,” Archie said.

^^Riinnin’ away to America?” Jonathan teased him. He laughed when
he spoke. It was the word for ridicule in Dentwater. ‘^Oh, run away to'
Ameriky!” people roared at each other, meaning the iitmost folly. ■
dunno,” Archie said sullenly. “But I’m agoin’.”

“I’m goin’, too—but home,” Jonathan rejoined. “I’ve a good tea waitin*,
and I’m froze.”

He went on, forgetting Archie’s childishness. Archie Bainter was always
in trouble at the school. “For shame to you, Archie Bainter!” the master
had cried at him only this afternoon. “A great lad that ought to be a sign
and sample to the younger ones! If it wasn’t that they are dismissed earlier
than you, I’d feel called to punish you before them to teach them what
happens to lads in school that don’t study their lessons and read wicked
yeUow-covered books inside their geographies!”

He had held up between his thumb and forefinger the yellow book.
“American trash!” he had snorted.

But there were no younger children after three o’clock, only the four
of them being coached for the examinations. If Jonathan passed the exam-
inations, he could go on to be a teacher. That was his private hope. He
wanted to go on, maybe even to London University, and be some day
headmaster of a school. His mother knew~no one else.

^^Hic--haec--hoC’-huius--huius-‘huius--^^ he muttered. He should have
begun Latin long ago, but they did not teach it in the village school. Mr.
Hopkins, the master, was teaching him every day betweentimes, as he
could. He should have told Mr. Hopkins long ago he was going to be a
teacher. But it had seemed presumptuous, and he had not done it. Some
day when Mr. Hopkins was old he maybe would have this very school—
or a better one. And he would live with his mother at home. By that time
he’d have done all she wanted done, like a bit of porch put on the south,
glassed in, where she could keep her flowers in winter.

He turned in at the little gate, and from the low-set windows candle-
light gleamed softly through the fringing mist. Now, if only his father were
not at home, he’d tell his mother what Mr. Hopkins said today about his
Latin, how he said, “You learn so uncommonly fast, young man, it’s a
downright shame I have to spend hours on a lot of numbskulls and let
a lad like you have the minutes. But ’tis the educational system we labor
under.”

And then he gave up every hope. He heard his father’s voice resounding
through the room as he opened the door.

“I say to Ameriky I’m goin*, and so I be agoin’!”

He shut the door quietly. Nobody noticed him. They were all staring
at his father, who was standing in the middle of the kitchen. He had a
ioaf of bread against his chest and was cutting a great slab from it. Edward

THE TOWNSMAN'

was there,, too, leaning against the small wooden mantel behind the stove,
Ms hands in Ms pockets, Ms mouth pursed under his young moustache. 'The
children were at the table, eating buttered bread and drinking their mugs
of ' milk and ' water. But Jonathan looked at Ms mother. She was sitting
at' the table with the baby Maggie at her breast; and her: face, turned
toward his father, was wMte and woeful. :

“Gh, Clyde!” she whispered. ‘Tou’d never go otf to America!”

‘Why not?” Clyde Goodiiffe retorted. ‘T been bearin' of it. It’s the on’y
place now on God's earth a man can hope to get land for himself. Here
In this danged England you've to be bom with land under your feet, else
you go tiddlin’ along the rest of your days. I’m sick of puttin’ my back
and my blood into land for another man.”

“A lot you put into it!” she cried, goaded. “A great big lazy chap, allays
at Blackpool where you've no reason to be, and the land waitin' to be
tended!”

“Ah-ha, but 'twas at Blackpool I heard of this!” he said triumphantly.
He put down the loaf now and smeared butter upon the slice he had
sawed. ‘‘Listen, Mary, you get on a boat—”

“Not free, I’ll lay,” she broke in, but he scorned to notice this.

“And you sail away to New York, see, and then you go part by train-
well, maybe all the way by train— to Kansas. Kansas is the country for us.
The soil’s that thick and black there’s no plumbin’ it— and it’s free-or all
but. They want enterprisers there— chaps with large minds that’ll build the
country big. England’s a tiddlin’ place.”

“Engiand’il treat you fair if you treat it fair,” his wife broke in.

Clyde Goodiiffe banged the flat of his hand on the table so hard that
the thick dishes jumped.

“Fm goin* to Ameriky,” he said sternly. “Fve signed papers to go. And
you’re all goin’ with me. The man asks me, ‘Have you help?’ and I sayed,
T have— three on ’em.’ And he sayed, ‘Good— it’s a country where the more
sons a man has, the better!’ ”

“I’m not goin’,” Edward said in his hard voice. He was a square young
man called handsome by his fellows because he was fair-haired and his
skin ruddy.

“You’ll go If I say it,” his father shouted, turning on him,

“Not I, Father,” Edward said. “Fm doin’ well in my job, and Millie
Turner and I are engaged. I was goin’ to tell you tonight, Mother.”

“You and Millie— Well, I never, Eddie!” his mother cried. She was
diverted by this news, and her look on Edward was surprised and fuH of
simple admiration.

Nothing else, Jonathan knew, could have staved off his father except
this news. Old Mr. Turner owned the best ships’ chandler’s shop in Black-
pool and the one in which Edward worked.

“I knew you were doin’ wonderful well, Ed,” Ms father said, amazed,
“but not so well as that”

AMERICAN: TRIPTYCH

Edward griimed complacently. ‘Xook to tlie top wMie you’re lookin’,
says I,” he replied. “So I popped the question last night, and she took me.’^

: “Well, may God bless me,” Clyde Goodiiffe roared. “Why, bring ’er
along, lad, and well start a ships’ chandlery In Kansas!”

“But it ain’t by the sea, is it, Father?” Jonathan put in.

His father stopped drinking and looked struck. “Dang it,” he said, “it’s
in the middle of Ameriky!”

a man would be a fool to- go if he was me,” Edward said trium-
phantly.

“He would be a fool if he was anyone,” his mother retorted. ■ “And you,
too, Clyde, if you leave the land you’ve lost money on five years ruimin’
and this, year the first, after all the manurin’ and tOlin’, that it has brought
us In a bit.”

“Rented land!” Clyde Goodiiffe muttered. He was pulling at the loaf
of bread again, tearing off great snags of the crust and wiping them in
the butter before he put them in his mouth.

“Land’s worth what you get off it,” his wife replied. “And what about
my shop and the cottage and the garden— Oh, Clyde!” She broke down
into weeping; and Maggie, solemnly watching all this, began to roar.
Jonathan, leaning with his back against the door, came forward and took
her from his mother’s knees.

“There now, lass,” he soothed her, “Come to Jonnie. Here, Ruthie, give
’er a sup of your milk and water.”

He put Ruth’s half-empty mug to the baby’s lips and silenced her.

But there was no way of silencing his mother’s weeping. They were used
to it, and yet they would never grow used to it. The children hung their
heads miserably and tried to go on eating and drinking. Ruth held a lump
of bread and butter in her cheek and could not swallow it, and tears came
welling into her large hazel-brown eyes. Pale little Arthur shrank smaller
in his chair, and only Jamie seemed unmoved. He kept his eyes down and
went on chewing steadily.

His wife’s tears always made Clyde sweat with rage. The dampness
sprang out now on his forehead, and he leaped up and threw the loaf on
the floor.

“Dang the last lot of you!” he shouted. “You’re allays holdin’ a man
down with your bits of shops and your talk of a man ought to do this
and do that until Fm fair crazy, like a boat tied to a rock. Stay with your
tiddlin’ shops! I’m goin’ to Ameriky if I live a lone man the rest of my
days!”

He kicked the loaf across the kitchen and stalked out of the door and
slammed it so that lime flew from the whitewashed walls around it.

Behind him they sat exactly as they were, except that the mother stopped
weeping. She turned her head away from them and wiped her eyes on her
apron. Then after a few seconds she went and picked up the loaf and
dusted it with her hands and put it on the table. No one spoke. She stroked

THE TOWNSMAN 11

back her hair^ her hands' trembling. Then she sat down again and 'pnt out
her arms.

'^Oive me the baby, Jonathan,” she said.

He set Maggie upon her knees and, bending over her, saw that the cup
upon the table beside her was unused. :

‘‘Shall I pour your tea now, Mother?” he asked.

“Yes, please, Jonathan,” she replied in a quivering voice.

He poured her cup and then his own, and they sat, a sober little group,
in the quiet kitchen. The kettle on the stove began suddenly to sing, and
the yellow cat, asleep underneath the oven, came out stretching itself and
yawning.

“When will you be countin’ on marryin’ Millie, Edward?” his mother
asked.

“I dunno, Mother,” he replied. “I said, ‘Name the day, MilHe,’ but she
says, ‘Oh, ifs early for that, Eddie.’ But I count on summer, maybe.”

“There’s no use in waitin’ when the girl’s as much a prize as Millie is,”
Ms mother agreed.

She was almost herself again, and the children began to come out from
their shadow. Arthur drank his milk, and Jamie spread jam upon a fresh
slice of bread, and Ruth jumped from her seat and ran over to her mother
and squeezed the baby heartily.

“Oh, you’re a sweet tiddiin’ thing!” she cried, and skipped away to a
corner where she kept her dolls.

“Where’ll you be livin’, Edward?” his mother inquired.

“I’ll move into old Turner’s house,” Edward said solemnly.

“You’ll never!” his mother cried.

“He wants it and so does the old lady,” Edward replied. “Millie bein’
their only, they won’t hear to aught else.”

“Ifs a handsome place,” Jonathan said respectfully.

“You’re wise not to give in to your father,” his mother said.

“Don’t you give in to him neither, Mother,” Edward told her. He rose
as he spoke. “Must be goin’, I reckon,” he said. “Millie’s waitin’.” He
began putting on his reefer coat. Outside, the twilight had thickened into
night. “Hope you don’t think I was too rough, Mother. But you see how
silly ’twould be for me with my chances to go off to Ameriky.”

“I do see it, Edward,” his mother answered. She was sopping bits of
dry bread in her milky tea and feeding the baby.

Edward bent and kissed her on the cheek and then kissed the baby.

“Well, good-by, all of you,” he said. He stood, Ms hand on the door.
“Shall you be givin’ in to ’im, Mother?” he asked.

His mother lifted tragic eyes. “How do I know what to do with him?”
she replied. “I only know when I think of leavin’ England I feel myself
sick inside. Twould be bad enough to leave Dentwater and this bit of a
place I’ve held together for home for all of you. But to leave England!”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

She bit her lip and shook her head, and tears gathered' again in her bine
eyes as she went back to feeding Maggie.

And Jonathan, watching her, for the first time saw the Ml meaning of
what might come. To be leaving England! He had never thought of such
horror. To leave England was to leave alithat, was life and home and
place in the world.

^T’d advise you stay by your own mind, Mother,” Edward said.

“There’s more to things than that,” his mother said sadly.

. “I, reckon there is,”- he admitted. He hesitated awkwardly. “Well,
good-by all— till next time,” he said and went out

■ Left behind with Ms mother, Jonathan resolved to ask her nothing;. How
■could she know, what to do? "How. could, any of them know what to do?
He wiped Arthur’s mouth and untied his bib, and the child slipped down.
Jamie was already playing behind the stove with his ship.

, Suddenly his mother looked up. “Draw back the curtains, son,.” she said.
“Your father, will be cornin’ home after .Ms rage. He always does, though
he’ll be late, maybe. And set the candle on the sill.”

He drew back- the brown homespun curtains as far as he could, and
then, after an instant, he set the lighted candle upon the deep stone sill.

They were going to America. Jonathan knew when he came down to
breakfast in the morning that they were going. Night had done it again.
There was some strange power in the night. He had seen it work before
to change his father from anger into good temper and his mother from
rebellion into acquiescence. When he had gone upstairs last night, the can-
dle still burning in the window, he had been troubled. If only night were
not ahead! His mother had seemed quite calm all evening, though his father
had not come back. The children w^ere in bed, and she sat stitching on a
shirt. He had wanted to sit with her and read aloud to her after he had
finished Ms lessons. She was fond of having him read to her, but tonight
she put Mm off.

“Better go to bed, Jonathan,” she said, “It’s late.”

“It’s late for you, too,” he objected.

“Aye, but it’s my duty to sit up for ’im,” she replied.

He looked at her. Her small, fine-featured face looked composed and
firm again. He leaned and kissed her cheek and went up the narrow stair,
hung like a ladder against the wall. He might have been tempted to trust

THE TOWNSMAN 13

her if there had^ not been night ahead, he thought, and sighed, being be-
wildered, by what he did not understand.

He always gets around her by somehow I don’t know, he thought sadly,
and ;lay awake; a long time after that, the bedcovers drawn, decently up
to Ms chin, and ' the close ceiling near enough above Ms head to reach
if he put, his hand up to' touch' it. , '

And then in. the morning he did not need to hear his father’s loud and
cheerful voice to know the night had worked once more as he had feared.
He had overslept himself a little, so that when he hastened down the stove
was already hot, and the kettle on, and his mother setting the breakfast
table. Near the stove his father was shaving himself before a milky mirror
and talking as he shaved, and around the room the children were dressing
themselves. Only Maggie sat upon a rag mat on the floor, still as she had
been lifted from bed, sucking a crust and watching them ail with shaip
bright eyes. .

‘‘Hey there, Jonnie!” Ms father called to Mm. He stretched Ms jaw as
he scraped at it. “Lend a hand to Artie’s boots, will ye, lad? He’s been
hollerin’ against the laces. I can’t abide lacin’ their boots— there’s no end
to ’em on such a lot as I have. Well, when we get to Ameriky they can
all go barefoot. The sun’s that warm over there, they tell me.”

So he knew. He stooped and laced Arthur’s small patched boots, and
Ruth stood waiting to have her pinafore buttoned.

“Wash them a bit before they eat, Jonathan,” his mother bade him.
“The kettle water’s hot”

“Yes, Mother,” he said.

He waited until his father had finished with the pottery basin and then
emptied it outside the door. It was still dark outside, and the air was raw.
He shut the door quickly and, filling the basin, washed one face after
another of the row before him. They were ail good children except Jamie.

“Fm washed,” Jamie said briefly,

“You’re not,” Jonathan said sternly. ■ ,

“I am, too— I washed in Father’s water,” Jamie said doggedly,

Jonathan seized Mm firmly, Ms head under his arm, and scrubbed his
face.

“Then you’d best be washed once more,” he said.

“Gently, Jonathan,” Ms mother called.

“Kick him, Jamie!” Ms father cried, and roared when Jamie let out Ms
foot and kicked, at Jonathan’s shins. . .

“For shame, Clyde!” Ms mother said. “Jamie, you should thank your
brother. Come and sit down to your porridge, ail of you.”

It was like every other morning and yet like none other. He finished
his breakfast and washed his bowl and spoon and set it away on the shelf
as he always did and put on his coat and cap and his brown knit muffler
and took up his books. He had said nothing to anyone, though all through
the meal Ms father had been gabbling about what he would do. Through

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

the wall lie put up by long habit against Ms father, he heard only fragments
of the boasting, windy voice.

' thousand acres. . . . You don’t manure, you just toss in your seed.
. . . A handful of folk to a land ten times the size of England. ... I s’all
build you a house, lass, that’s- a dock’s castle to tMs ’un. . . . The Indians
are driven off, I tell you-it’s not like it was-the land belongs to English
folk now, like us. . .

‘T’m off now, Mother,” Jonathan said at the door, and waited for her
answering look.

“Good-by, son,” she said.

But her mind was not on him this morning, and he saw it and went
lonely away, trudging through the gray streets into the chill lantern-lit
schoolroom. Mr. Hopkins was there already, setting a problem in square
wMte figures upon the black-painted wall.

“Good morning, Jonathan Goodliffe,” he said briskly. “You’re here fine
and early. There’ll be time for the fifth declension before the rest of them
come in.”

Jonathan put his books down upon his desk.

“I doubt there’s any good in my goin’ on with Latin, sir,” he said.

Mr. Hopkins turned upon him, astonished, the round lump of chalk in
his hand.

“What’s that?” he asked sharply.

“We’re goin’ to America,” Jonathan told him.

“America!” Mr. Hopkins repeated. “Whatever for?”

Jonathan shook his head. “I don’t know, sir,” he said.

Mr. Hopkins took off his glasses with one hand. “Why, I never heard
of anybody goin’ from these parts!” he said earnestly. “From Cornwall,
yes, they’re poor enough to go anywhere, and the Scotch and Irish— why
shouldn’t they go to get away from what they’ve got? But here— it’s folly!
You poor lad, Jonathan Goodliffe! No, you’re right. What’ll the savages
over there be wanting with Latin?”

Jonathan felt his throat swell. He could not speak.

“Well, I never!” Mrv Hopkins said slowly and, putting on his glasses,
stared at Jonathan so severely that he felt weak and sat down and began
studying furiously.

The morning dragged its length along to noon, and he went home to
dinner. But there he found his father not at home and his mother unex-
pectedly cheerful

“We don’t have to go for a year, Jonathan,” she told him the moment
he came in the door. “That is, you and me and the children don’t. Your
father’s goin’ first. If he likes it when the year’s up, we’ll come along to
him. If he don’t, he can come back to us. I stuck out for that,” she added
triumphantly.

They looked at each other.

' THE TOWNSMAH 15

*^Motlierr^ be cried, and suddenly she began to lan^, and be langbed
with her. :

year!” she said mischievously. “When did he ever like anything: as
long as a year?”

It was reprieve and all but final pardon from a sentence.

“Then Fll go back to Latin,” he said joyously. “Mr. Hopkins said as
how savages wouldn’t need it.”

“And I shall go on with the garden,” she said. “I was countin’ on a new
rosebusb.or two this year. Last night I thought ’twas no use. But today
when he said he’d leave us behind a year, I said, ‘Then I’ll get the rose-
bushes from the vicar’s wife, after all.’ ”

She looked years younger than she had at breakfast. She was a small,
cheerful, chirping little creature upon whom sadness always sat foolishly.
But Joy became her. Her blue eyes shone, and her cheeks were pink, and
she ran about the kitchen putting the meal on the table.

“Mother!” Jonathan cried at her again, and when she looked at him
in astonishment as childlike as Maggie’s, he rushed to her and threw his
arms about her and could not speak.

A year, he was thinking, a whole year, he and she and the children!

“There!” she said, pushing him away. “Let be, Jonathan. Sit and eat
your meat.”

Her practical, reasonable voice, clear and soft, seemed on the instant to
set the world secure again and drive away the huge dark continent of the
unknown, and he sat down and ate heartily.

The new year began the day his father left them. Clyde Goodliffe could
not do quickly enough whatever he had decided upon. He had the furious
determination of the impatient and variable man. Within twelve days he
was ready to saO for America. The only stumbling block had been the
twenty acres of land he rented from three different men. He wanted to
give it up, leaving the winter wheat in which much of it stood in lieu of
rent,

“’Tidn’t as if I was goin’ to be here to harvest it,” he said.

But Jonathan had seen his mother’s wish to keep the land. “Land is
easy to be fid of and hard to get back again,” she had said.

“FE never be wantin’ them bits of acres back again,” Clyde shouted
back with contempt “WTiy, twenty acres don’t make a kitchen garden in
Kansas!”'

“What you’E do with more I don’t know,” she retorted, “seein* that
twenty’s been too much for you here.”

“Tiddiin’ English land,” he sneered, “afiays awantin’ manure and lime
and stuff put in it!”

“Fll take care of it,” Jonathan said. He had never done aE the work
alone before, but now he felt he could. With his father gone, he would

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

work twice as liard for them all, and what he did not know he could ask
of ' his neighbors. ' , ,

want to be rid of the rent,” his father said shortly.

“ril make the shop pay for it,” his . mother broke in. “It does seem
right down folly for us to give up what was just beginnin’ to pay. ■ Stands
to reason there’ll be good crops this year after the bad ones.”

“Ifs been a good winter with snow and all,” Jonathan said earnestly.

“Have it your own way, then, so long as my money don’t go for it,”
Clyde retorted. “I got to put by enough to bring over the lot of you by
next year’s spring.”

His dark eyes grew mischievously tender. “ ’Twould be a wonderful good
chance for a man to free himself from a burden of won*y and trouble
and start out new. What’d you do, lass, if I let old England have you and
said good-by for good ’n’ ail?”

“I’d be glad enough to be rid of you,” his wife retorted, “if that’s the
way you feel.”

He threw back his head until they could see his hairy throat, and gave
his bellow of laughter.

“Banged if Fm not fond of you and all your brats,” he shouted, and
tumbled her head in his two hands like a ball until she cried, laughing
and protesting, “Clyde— Clyde— let me be— I’m ail dizzy!”

Jonathan slipped out into the yard. He was suddenly sick. He could not
bear the sight of his mother’s smooth blond head rolling between his father’s
big hairy hands.

He’s so cruel rough with her! he thought passionately. His chest heaved
and he wanted to weep. Why don’t she stop him? he thought furiously.
He needed to do something hard and immediate and driving, and he
stooped and began pushing and pulling at the big square stone that made
the upper of the two steps down from door to path.

The door opened, and his father stood ready to come out

“Whaf re you doin’, you daft boy?” he demanded.

Jonathan, on his knees in the mud, looked up at him.

“Fm makin’ these steps straight,” he said sullenly, “They’ve been
crooked this long while.”

“I haven’t seen ’em crooked,” his father said gaily. He stepped down
and went to the gate. “Allays settin’ somethin’ right, you be!” He went
down the street, whistling.

He’s goin’ to the public house again, Jonathan thought bitterly, and then
was no happier for knowing he was unjust His father was not a drunkard
and did not spend much time with drinking men. That was the trouble
with him, Jonathan thought. There was nothing you could lay a finger on.
He had no real wickedness. It would have been easier if he had. He longed
for his father to be a downright plain bad man like Archie’s father, who
drank and when he was drunk beat his wife.

If I saw my dad lay a hand on my mother to hurt her! Jonathan thought

THE TOWNSMAN

savagely. But, no, his father kicked the furniture, aud. he could throw a
loaf of bread or a plate across a room; but he beat not even one of the
chiidren. And on the same day. when he was lowering and qiiarreIso.me
and angry about one Thing after another, he could stop everything to pour
a saucer of milk for the cat and set it under the stove. A mixed-up, trying
sort of man, Jonathan thought with frequent gloom. Today as he watched
Ms father go toward Blackpool, he added, ' “Allays thinkiM too big about
what isn’t there, and. never seein’ what’s under Ms nose to be done!’’

If it weren’t for him, her son, what would become of bis mother with
a man. like that?

And yet on the day when his two older sons went to Blackpool to bid
Glyde Goodliffe good-by, it was a sorrowful day for them all in its strange
way. He had found a berth to work his way on a freight ship sailing from
Liverpool to New York.

“Never tell me it don’t pay to hang about the town a bit, lass,” he
said to his wife. “That is, if you’re a clever chap, like me.”

From Blackpool he was going on a coal sMp free because the captain
was a man he knew. At the cottage Ms wife had cried quietly now and
then while she packed his bag, until he looked at her with impatience in
his eyes.

“Give over, Mary— do! S’ail I carry the memory of you weepin’ and
wailin’ all the months Fm to be away? You’ll be safe from me for a year.
Think about that and dry up, lass. Ain’t that a comfort? For a year you
can sleep safe in your bed and not wake up to worry whether you’re goin’
to have a baby or not!”

“Oh, Clyde!” She was so shocked that she stopped crying.

“You’ve thought of it, I lay,” he said, Ms eyes dancing. He seized her
and rubbed her cheek with Ms. “Own up to yourself, now, lass.”

“I will not!” she cried.

“Then ye have,” he said, laughing.

“If I have, it’s not to say I won’t long for you,” she said. “Oh, Clyde,
dear lad!”

She threw down the coat she held in her hand and curled against him
in the sweet way she had. She did not do it often now. But when she did,
it caught hold of him just as it always had.

“Don’t look at another woman, Clyde!” she begged him in a tight little
whisper.

“Never fear, Mary!” he whispered to her,

“You’ll come back if you don’t like it, won’t ye, Clyde?” she begged.
“You wouldn’t be proud and stick to America just to be stubborn, would
you? And make us all give up England if America isn’t what you tMok
it is?”

“If it ain’t better than I think it is, even, I’ll come back,” he told her.

And then he had kissed her hard twice and then again, and she picked

iMEKICAN TRIPTYCH

Bp the coat and put it in the bag* They went downstairSs and he kissed
the younger children and pulled Jamie’s nose, ^Tor extra,” he said, because
Jamie' was his pet, and they stood watching him go with the two big ones^
Edward on one side of him and Jonathan on the other, carrying his bags,

“Here, you lummoxes,” he had said, “it’ll be the last time for many a
month,”

They picked up the bags, Edward the smaller one, and Jonathan, always
silent, the heavy sack. Down the street before the road went over the hil
Clyde stopped, turned, and waved both arms to the little group in the door;
and Mary’s apron waved like a flag in reply. Then he went on again, his
thick boots clumping the cobbled street. What he was thinking Ms sons did
not know. But when they were down the shallow hill and out of sight of
Dentwater, and there was only the low-lying Blackpool ahead, he began to
talk, not of them, but of America.

“I’m free inside for the first time in my life,” he said in his harsh, loud
voice. “Smothered I’ve been in this little bit of an old country. There’s
been no room here for a hundred year, m lay. A new country is the
country for men and lads,” He remembered then that Edward was not
coming. “Don’t you shut yourself to coming, Edward,” he said to his oldest
son. “Soon’s I find everything goin’ big, I’ll let you know, and you can set
up one way or ’nother, you and Millie, and whatever cMldren are yours,
I aim to begin big. That’s the secret in Ameriky, they tells me. Everybody
begins big. The little ’uns are lost.”

He took off his cap, and the wind lifted his rough black hair from his
forehead that was low and square. His high cheekbones were red, and his
full lips pressed together with unusual firmness. None of his sons had the
largeness of his build. The fineness of their mother had tempered his share
in them. Edward was as near his father’s height as he would ever foe, and
he was three inches shorter.

“Jamie’ll beat me, and the only one to do it,” Clyde always said. But
Jamie was only a small freckle-faced boy now.

“It’s a wunnerful good thing I’m doin’ for you all,” he went on. The
road was muddy, but he went tramping through it. “You’ll live to thank
the day I was bold enough to see it and make up my mind to do the big
thing.”

They were going over the long flats now, and Blackpool lay ahead, dark
against a windy gray sea. It was February, and they had not seen the sun
In a month. There was no sun today, but the air was not cold as they
walked. A carter came by. His cart was empty, and it was drawn by two
great sluggish gray horses. He pulled up.

“Want a ride?” he inquired. He peered down at them from under a
rusty felt hat, and Ms face was narrow and askew.

“We do,” Clyde said gladly. He was beginning to feel embarrassed by
the long walk with his sons. He was not used to being with them alone.
They chmbed in, bags and all.

THE TOWNSMAN

.^^Leavia’ for .somewhere?^^' the carter mquired affably. Seen now face
to. face, it was apparent that Ms Jaw had' once been dislocated and .never
set properly. But one saw such faces in Blackpool.

®^Goln* to Ameriky,’’ Clyde answered proudly.

The carter whistled. ‘‘A long way,’' he said. He looked at Edward. ^*You
goiM?" he asked.

Edward said coldly. He sat on the side of the cart carefuMy to
save Ms clothing from coal dust.

‘‘You?” the carter asked Jonathan.

“I—don’t know,” Jonathan faltered and glanced at Ms father.

^ The carter grinned. “Looks like you’re the gay chap, old ’on,” he told'
Clyde Goodliffe. “Amerlky, hey? There’s a lot of talk about Anieriky now,”'

“It’s the only place for a man as is a man,” Clyde said.

“I’ll hold my end up In England, for all of Ameriky,” the carter said
and spat over the side of the cart.

“Do,” said Clyde. “Ameriky’s on’y for them as wants room.”

And yet not until they had climbed down from the cart and gone to the
wharf did Ms sons feel that he was going. All the time it had seemed only
another one of his big windy schemes. But on the coal-stained wharf it
suddenly came true. There the sMp lay that was to take him to Liverpool,
a small freighter bobbing against its ropes. They went aboard and put down
the bags on the deck, and then came the moment of good-by. They had
never told him good-by before. For all Ms arguing and fuming, he had
never left them. He became for the moment at once pitiable and heroic.
He was going so far. There was' the ocean and the unknown continent
ahead of his solitary figure. How could he manage alone when he fuddled
the least thing at home? And yet he was calm and full of courage.

“Good-by, lads,” he said heartily. “Edward, I ask you not to let Millie
take up your whole mind. Go to see your mother.”

“I will, Father,” Edward said solemnly.

“And, Jonathan,” Ms father continued, “when I send for you all, help
her to see it’s right and for the best. She’s that fond of you that if you
want to come, she’ll be more’n half ready to do it.”

Jonathan felt still more softened. “Yes, Father,” he said solemnly.

He grasped their hands and shook each of them hard.

“Now get along with you. Fli have no standin’ about,” he ended.

They obeyed him and walked slowly away from the ship. They turned
once as by common accord. He was still there, and he motioned them
sharply to go on—go on! They went on then until they reached the corner
where Turner’s chandlery stood, and here Edward stopped.

“Reckon I’ll go in and finish my day’s work,” he said,

“I’ll go on back, then,” Jonathan answered.

They lingered a moment.

“Will you be home soon, Edward?” Jonathan asked.

. .

■i

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

*'Yes, I wll,' and I plan to bring Millie as soon as ifs' announced,”
Edward said. ^

''Tbat’Il be nice for Mother,” Jonathan replied.

They had nothing more to say to each other.

^‘Good-by, then, Jonnie,” Edward said at last

*^Good-by, Ed,” Jonathan replied.

They parted, each thinking of the solitary figure starting alone that
night to cross the sea; and Jonathan, plodding home in the afternoon twi-
light, wondered at himself that he could feel so dreary because Ms father
was gone.

Reckon there’s something about him, after all, he thought Ahead of
hiirt the severe horizon was black against a neutral sky.

He must make his mother happy. He had always felt this necessity
upon him, but now it became a passion. He alone could make her happy.
Edward had Millie, but Ms mother had only him. He rose in the morning
and lit the kitchen stove and had the porridge steaming before she came
down. He stayed after breakfast to clear the table and rushed back at noon
to help her with the children. And every Monday morning he got up at
five o’clock to help her with the wash. That was the one thing his father
had used to do. On Mondays Ms father got up and set the tubs for her
and doused the clothes in them and wrung the sheets. He would not hang
them on the line, but he carried the baskets out for her.

As long as Jonathan could remember, he knew Monday morning before
he even came out of sleep, because of the soapy hot reek of soiled clothes
rising from kitchen to roof. It filled his comer of the attic like a miasma,
and he woke stifled, his nostrils acrid. The reek was the reek of poverty to
him, dreary and sodden; and he got up weighted with the plight of Ms
parents, who must work so hard. He felt apologetic for Ms existence when
his father, blowing and blustering, sat down to breakfast. “Mind how you
lads use your breeches and shirts, in God’s name,” he shouted. “Fve about
wore myself out on ’em today. If I had the doin’ of it. I’d let you run
naked, I would, and you’d wash your own skins when you dirtied ’em.”

But now he liked being up early and alone with his mother. She had
a routine—the wMte things first in the clean suds and then the colored ones,
and then the rinsings in the small tin tub which they used for baths on
Saturday nights. The smeU of the soap was sharp and clean when he
plunged it into clean water*

THE TOWNSMAN

me wasli my own shirt, now, Mother,' he commanded. And, them
breeches with the mud on the knees 111 dod'

“Those,” she corrected him gently. “Take care, Jonathan, ' how you
speak. Grammar’s sign and seal on, a man. ’Tidn’t his clothes— he can put
them on himself as fine as he likes, but how his words come out of him
tells you ail .he is.”

She handed him his garments, and then she went on a little diffidently,

“If you’E copy your father’s downright good heart and speak after me.

I’ll be pleased.”

“I’ll take after you in everything if I have my way,” he told' her.

“Mother’s boy you always were,” she said smoothly.

■ He felt a dear strong happiness warm in his belly as though it were
something hot he had drunk.

“I hope you’re happy, Mother,” he said dizzily. “I hope you don’t miss
him too much.”

He had never come out with it like that before. But he had to know
whether or no she was happy alone with him and the children. Suppose
his father never came back— would she be happy?

“I do miss him,” she said quietly. “But that has nothing to do with you.”

Her soft voice saying these words seemed to shut him out. He felt his
happiness throb and stop, wounded.

“You’re bein’ happy has a lot to do with me. Mother,” he replied hotly.

“When you— aren’t happy, I feel it so.”

“How do you?” she asked. She looked at him curiously from her tub.

^Tt’s like cloud over sun,” he answered.

She smiled ruefully. “I have to be gay whether my heart is or not?”

“No, you don’t,” he answered, and then could not go on. When he tried
to tell her something he felt about her he was alwa 3 ^s stopped by the ti^t
thickness of his breast. He was bound in by it. There was nothing to do
until he had freed himself by moving away from her. It was sweet and
yet intolerable to be so close to her. When she was gay he was happiest,
for then he felt she was all right, and it did not matter whether he was
there or not. When she was sorrowful he was suffocated in her sorrow. He
must make her happy so he could be free. i

“I’m glad you like Millie so well, Mother,” he said, to talk about some-
thing else. Edward had brought Millie yesterday afternoon.

“I do like her,” his mother replied.

He tossed the wet, curled-up sheets to her as he finished them, and she
rinsed them.

“She isn’t a bit like you,” he went on, making talk.

“That’s nothing against her,” she replied, smiling a little.

“ ’Tis for me,” he said stoutly. “When I marry, it’ll only be when 1 find
a girl like you. Mother.”

“Oh, there’re lots like me,” she said. “You’O have a hard time pickin’.”

“Likely TVl be a bacheldore,” he returned politely.

22 AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

She laughed, and he was pleased with himself and smiled and winked

Ms ' eye at her.

“You’re the girl for me,” he repeated.

He thought of Millie Turner. She was a large, loosely built girl, big-
boned and yet with a turn to fat. Her pale brown eyes, a little popped,
under scattered brows, were anxiously kind, and her dark hair was scanty
and straight. But she had tried very hard to do her share of getting tea,
and not to seem a guest.

“Now let me cut the bread and butter it, do, Mother,” she said, when

Edward brought her to tea. _

“It was ‘Mother’ here and ‘Mother’ there,” Mary Goodhffe said to
Jonathan when they were gone. Her eyes twinkled, and she laughed softly.
“It makes me feel downright queer to have a great hulkin’ woman callin’
me ‘Mother.’ She’s three years older than Edward and looks it. . . . Not
but what the girl means weU,” she added, “and she’ll be good in the chan-
dlery and anxious to please her husband. That’ll suit Edward.” She had
twinkled again. “Or any man-”

... “Go on, Jonathan Goodliffe,” she retorted.

“As you say,” he laughed, and picked up the basket of wrung clothes
and carried it out. His father would never hang them because the neighbors
might laugh at a man doing such work, but he did not mind. He lifted
the sheets and shook them out and felt their wetness flapping against him
as he reached for the line.

She’s happier than she ever was, he thought gladly. She’s better with him

away. ; ,

Very often during the day he thought she was happier. Together they
planned the planting of the rented acres, and when he was able to get it
ploughed she came out and seeded it to oats and com and a little of the
new maize that his father sent them in a tin box from America. Maize
they had never planted before, but they had heard of it, and here were
the big yellow grains. Part of it they had planted in furrows before the
letter came, and then they found it must be put in hills, a few grains
together,

"‘S’all we dig it all up again to do it right?” he asked his mother anxiously.

'‘No, indeed not,” she replied stoutly. '‘They’re planted in good English
ground, and they’ll come up however.”

And so they Md, big strong spears of bright green and of a shape they
had never seen before.

“A savage, wild-lookin’ grass, I’d say, if I didn’t know,” his mother said,
staring at it. It grew faster than a reed as soon as summer came.

He had never worked so hard as he did that summer, and he found
out once for ail his life that he was no farmer. He hated the labor of the
land, the back-break of weeding and the reluctance of proper growth.

Danged sdly weak things, crops are, he thought, sweating in muggy

THE TOWNSMAN

My days. Now that' schooi was out he attacked thelaEd early, and late.
Weeds have all the strength. It’s evil that’s strong, after al. ' .

He hated above all being dependent upon weather.. To know that all
his labor and, thought brought to bear upon fruitage from seeds he ^ had
planted were nothing if there was no rain or if there was too much, forced
him to desperation. And yet anxiety and revolt were useless. There the
skies were, impervious as stone or turning suddenly to soft, endless rain.

It’s the feeling that my brains are no use that I can’t abide, he thought.
A man may as well be a dolt as not if he’s a farmer— thinkln’ will, do hl,m
■no good.

But he was careful to hide this hatred from his mother. The land was
precious to her.

Yet he was only sixteen, and he could not keep from' shirking a little
sometimes the endless routine of the land, nor from coaxing and bribing
Jamie and sometimes sternly forcing him to help in cultivating. The maize
when it was ripe they did not like. It tasted green, though they boiled it,
as his father had written them to do, and when they dried it and ground
it into meal it had a strange musty taste.

‘Tt tastes like mice smells,” Jamie said bluntly and, though they made
it into porridge and poured milk on it and mixed sugar in it, none of them
liked it. Even Maggie spat it out solemnly, aghast at its strangeness upon
her tongue.

‘‘There’s a whole acre gone for nothing,” Jonathan groaned. “And a
million weeds hoed off it”

“We tried it, though,” his mother said practically, “and we know we
don’t like it. That’s something to know.”

They did very well that autumn. They used almost none of the money
his father sent now and again.

“Save it against your cornin’, if you don’t spend it,” he wrote them.
So his mother saved it in a tin biscuit box she kept in her room.

The little shop did well, too. It was a good year in England. Crops were
fair, and people had extra money to spend and gave their children pennies
for sweeties.

“If I was sure your father was cornin’ back,” his mother told Jonathan,
“I’d put piece goods into the shop. But—” She shook her head.

“You still think we’ll go. Mother?” he asked. He searched her face for
all she might not say in answer.

“You wouldn’t want me to leave my husband,” she replied.

He turned away. None of his labor had any fruit if while he labored
her mind was not there in her body.

He still dreaded the night. For then, when the younger children were
in bed and only he and she sat there, he with a book and she sewing or
knitting, the moment came when her eyes were far away, and he knew
what she was thinking. In the summer when the twilight was long he could
push the moment away. Sometimes, even, if they worked over her rose

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

bed, the moment never came at alL Or it only came so much as this, that
her face grew wistful and she said, “I just couldn’t bear to leave this bit
of a garden. I couldn’t make a garden on other ground. Nought would
grow for me when my heart wasn’t there to make it grow.’’

Then he knew that England was working for him ' against Ms father,
England was still holding her fast, and all that England was— the long
reaches of soft green, the shallow hill where Dentwater lay, the old church
and the trees stooped from the sea winds, and the cottage. When Mr.
Hopkins came back to open school and asked, "‘Are ye going to America,
Jonathan?” he answered with precious doubt, “It’s far from sure, Mr.
Hopkins.”

“Good,” Mr. Hopkins said. “Then you’re still for Latin?”

“If you please, Mr. Hopkins,” he answered gratefully.

“And your father?” Mr. Hopkins asked.

“He’s workin’ for a fanner there same as here,” Jonathan answered
with a grin.

And so indeed Clyde Goodliffe was, but always with the hope of land.
Other chaps, he wrote, had come ahead of him. Kansas was not so open
any more. He was not sure where they would stay when he got them there.
He was not buying any land yet— only getting enough money together to
bring them over. Then they would see. But still it was wonderful to have
a country so big all around that, let a man look anywhere, he could know
a thousand miles waited for him. His letters were like him— full of big
things, all not done.

The letters were what Jonathan feared in the darkening autumn eve-
nings that grew longer with the hurrying on of winter. For the first time
a year was short to him. Until now in his life a month had been nearly
endless, and a year eternity; but his father’s letters cut time to pieces.
Once a month they came, and it was too quick for peace.

For in the long dark evenings, when she had worked a while, his mother
grew restless. First she would hear the wind, and then she would murmur,
“Anyway, he’s not on the sea. It’s better to have him in America than a
sailor.”

Then she would put her work down and mend the fire and see if the
cat were fed. And then she settled to nothing again. Sometimes she counted
over their money, and sometimes she stirred up a batch of bread, or she
went to the window and stared out. And Jonathan, his books spread on the
kitchen table, waited until she went to the chest of drawers and pulled out
the top one and found the letters. When she did this she was lost to him;
for she sat down with them in her lap and read them over one by one,
and pondered over them and over the last one the longest. And all he had
of her were the bits she threw at him from her thoughts.

“For all he sayed, I can’t see the place, can you, Jonathan?”

“No, Mother,” he said miserably.

“All flat, as far as eye can see,” she went on.

THE TOWNSMAN

/'Soimds terrible dull, Mother.”

‘"•I don’t know— there’s trees, he says, and the fiowers growiii’ wild like
nothin’ we have here.”

■ Clyde had put Kansas wildfiowers into his letter, but their coIok were
gone when they reached England. Only their strange shapes were left, and
even these soon crumbled to dust.

‘Rare colors,’ he sayed,” she repeated, looking at their dust.

Jonathan did not answer. He was beginning to leam that, out of the
struggle within herself, if he agreed with her when she spoke against his
father, she hastened to defense, either direct or by defending the country
she had never seen.

And worst of all was the letter his father wrote when he had been 111.
Malaria, he said, but none of them knew the word until he said chills and
fever. Then she was nearly wild. She wrote him a long letter, sitting up
half the night to do it, pleading with him to come home.

‘‘What if your father should die out there alone among the savages?”
she whispered to Jonathan. But her letter on the sea crossed his saying
he was better again with the cold weather, and he told her about the colors
on the autumn trees and how never had he seen such colors in England
where the damp kept everything down to green and gray. A wonderful
country, he said over and over, and violently beautiful. That letter reached
them on a cold November day when the gray sea fog seeped up over
Dentwater and shut them out of the world. The children had colds; and
Maggie, staggering about, fell against the stove and burned her arm and
shoulder. Jonathan saw tears come into his mother’s eyes as she smeared
lard over the screaming child. Neither he nor she had slept that night until
nearly dawn because Maggie kept crying. Long after midnight Jonathan
heard his mother murmur in her distress, “Dear God, can a lone woman
stand this?” He wanted to cry out, “But I’m here, Mother!” and could not,
being too humble for it. If she did not think of it herself, what good would
it do him to remind her?

Evan Edward’s wedding, postponed until January, scarcely lifted the
darkness of the damp winter. They all went to it, for Edward sent a wagon
from Blackpool for them. They dressed in their best, and Jonathan yearned
over his mother’s sweet looks in her brown dress with its full skirt and
cape and the little brown bonnet with pink ribbon quilted under the brim.
She had the gift of putting her clothes on well and looking far better even
than the vicar’s wife, who was dressed always in black silk. His mother
looked better than anyone at the wedding. Millie could not be pretty even
as a bride. Her dress of heavy white satin only made her thicker, and her
round red face never lost its anxiety for a moment under her veil of coarse
lace. It was a solemn wedding until the eating and drinking began; and
then, women with women and men with men, they began to talk, and
Jonathan saw his mother always the center of a little cluster, listening to

AMEMGAN TRIPTYCH

lier teli of Clyde GoodMe, She looked pretty and faintly important while
she told them deprecatingly what he had written.

' fearful country, so big and all, but the flowers wonderful and plenty
of land and such a wide sky as you never see elsewhere unless in the
middle of the ocean and big trees and plenty of black rich soil— deep as
you can dig—”

‘‘Has he bought land yet?” This was Millie’s father, edging over to the
woman, a thick man with a flat voice.

“Not until he’s sure of the spot,” his mother answered.

“You’ll not be leavin’ England, though, Mrs. Goodlifte?” Mrs. Turner,
the bride’s mother, said. She was a small wrinkled woman with a pursed
mouth and a wide waist.

And then, though Jonathan strained to hear what his mother answered,
he did not hear, for a fresh, sharp voice said beside him, “Are you Jona-
than Goodliffe?”

He turned and saw a brown-faced girl beside him in a red woolen frock
with a white lace collar. Her black hair was straight, and her eyes blue
and strange-lookiog in her dark face.

“Yes, I am,” he said. He was not exactly shy, because he was too self-
reliant for that, but he had scarcely ever talked with a girl in his life.

“Constance Favor— Connie, Fm called— and in a manner we’re related.
At least now that my cousin Millie is married to your older brother, what
does that make us?”

She spoke with a sort of laziness, her full, rather pale lips scarcely mov-
ing, and he felt at once that she must be older than he. But she was not
quite as tall as he was, and he liked her clear blue eyes instantly.

“I don’t know, but something surely,” he said, and smiled.

“And are you goin’ to America, or do you stay with your brother?”
she asked. Her hands, smoothing her collar, were as brown as her face.

“It depends on my mother,” he said soberly. He turned his head back
to his mother, but whatever she had said was said. He had missed it. She
was talking now to Mr. Turner about Edward.

“You’ll find him a bit stubborn at times, Mr, Turner— that’s his father—
but he’s steady once he begins— that’s me in him. And I don’t believe your
Millie will rue this day.”

“Hope not,” Mr. Turner replied.

Mrs. Goodlifle bristled a little under her pink quilted ribbon. “No, I hope
not, too, and I hope Edward won’t, either,” she returned.

“Hope not,” Mr. Turner said more mildly, “It’s a little late for that
after the knot’s been tied.” He paused and stroked his thick red moustache.
“Anyways, as I see it, a marriage idn’t just thinking of each other. It’s the
shop and gettin’ on and the children and all that. Folks do best to remember
that.”

“Surely,” Mary Goodliffe agreed.

The fresh clear voice was at Jonathan’s ear again.

THE TOWNSMAN

“If r were you, Fd go m America. Ifs stupid here. Fd: go quick as a
wink.*'

“Why?" Jonathan asked.

“Oh, I .don't know," she answered.

“Connie-Connie!" Mrs. Turner called. “Come here, child!"

‘ Oh,' dear!" the girl said. “Just when we was gettin' acquainted! Do you
dance, Jonathan? There's to be dancin'!"

“I never did before," he answered.

^Then 111 show you," she said. “Fm. a rare good dancer," she added,
with a mischief in her eyes which suddenly lit her face.

Her going left him alone again in the crowd, and he sauntered over
to his mother. She was sitting now with Maggie asleep on her lap and
Arthur leaning against her, rubbing his eyes.

“Jonathan, help to put these children to nap," she told him. “They'll
be underfoot, once they start dancin’.”

He lifted the fat, inert child from his mother's lap, and they went Into
a dark bedroom, and he found a spot upon a bed where two children
were already asleep and laid Maggie down. She did not stir.

“Lie here, my little lad, on this nice mat on the floor," his mother said
to Arthur, and the little boy curled upon a wool mat by the bed, and she
covered him. Music burst out in the other room.

“Where’s Jamie and Ruth?" he whispered to his mother.

“Jamie’s out in the chandlery," his mother replied, “watching the ship’s
sailors come and go. He asked if he could, and I said yes. And Ruth’s
gone to play with a little girl next door.”

He was quite free, then. If Connie wanted to teach him to dance, there
was no reason why he shouldn’t learn, except that he was suddenly shy
before Ms mother to be dancing with a girl.

“Mother,” he said, “do you mind if I dance a bit?"

Her eyes were round. “I didn't know you could dance,” she cried.

“Constance Favor said she’d teach me a bit," he said.

He felt his chest grow hot, and the heat spread upward into his cheeks.
His mother looked at Mm with a mingled touch of doubt and surprise.

“Well, I reckon it won’t matter," she said, and doubt grew uppermost
in her face as he walked away from her.

They were already dancing when he came into the big room, a jiggy
reel that made voices hum and sing as people danced. At the end of the
line of dancers he saw the bride and groom, Edward more carefully casual
than ever in his position as bridegroom, and Millie still anxious. She held
up her skirts in both hands, her foot tapping and her head nodding, fearful
lest she miss the movement. Even so, she lost it by a fraction. “Here, girl!"
Edward cried.

“Oh, Ed!" she screamed.

But Edward swung out, and she rushed to meet him, while everyone

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

iatiglied aad clapped. And JoEatiiaiis hesitating, felt Ms, hand seized in
Connie’s firm grasp.

^ ^^Come along,” she said, “I was looking for you. Now,. mind you follow!”

There was no time to think about anything. He was swept into the dance
and forced to take thought lest he disturb its pattern through his ignorance.

' He' thought sometimes that, if it had' not been for that dance, ail Ms
life might have been different. But how could he know it then?

silly fool you looked,” his mother said to him in sharp disgust,
^leaning to hear'' all her gabble, and her dress so low you must have seen
her stummicL”

Here at home again in the kitchen he was , drenched with shame.

■ didn’t,” he muttered. No, but he had seen a bosom, divided into its
two full circles. He hadn’t wanted to see anything, but he had looked again
and again.

, “I don’t care for her. nor any girl,” he said angrily to Ms mother.

^Tt’s a queer way to hate them, then,” his mother retorted. On his
shoulder Maggie began to whimper. The other children were already un-
lacing their shoes, silent, their faces white with the fatigue of pleasure.
“Talkin’ to her and dancin’ with nobody else!”

“There was nobody else, Mother—except old women,” he answered.

“She’s too old for you, too, if that’s what you mean,” she cried. “One
Turner’s enough, I’ll thank you to remember! Millie Turner’s all right for
Edward. She idn’t bold like Connie. This girl’s got foreign blood in her.
Her father was a sailor, and he brought her home with him, a baby. The
mother was dead— he said.”

“Mother-Mother!” he begged her. “Don’t talk so— as if I was thinkin’
of marriage— when I’ve only seen her tonight!”

“She was thinkin’ of it— the likes of her always is,” his mother retorted.
“Here, give that child to me. Anything in breeches, that sort always looks
at Oh, Jonathan, you’re to be a teacher, remember, and go up in the
world! Edward won’t be a candle to you if you go on without gettin’ mixed
up.”

“I won’t get mixed up, Mother,” he muttered.

He gave Maggie to her and bent and in blind confusion began to un™
button Arthur’s little shirt.

“Sleep in your drawers tonight, eh, Artie?” he said. “It’s so late and
you’re that tired.”

He drew Arthur’s thin little body into the curve of his shoulder and went
upstairs with him and laid him in the bed and covered him. Jamie was
already asleep in the same bed. He had gone to bed dressed, and Jonathan
began carefully to untie his shoes and then slipped them off without waking
him. There was comfort in taking care of these small and helpless creatures.

I didn’t do anything, he thought sorely, ’tidn’t as if I went anywhere
with the girl.

THE TOWNSMAN 29

Ail'd then Ruth came . stealing upstairs in her long fiannel nightgown^
and he tucked her into the cot in. the same room.

^'Kiss me' good night, Jonnie,” she begged him.

He bent and kissed , her, cheek and smelled .the straw-sweet odor of her
hair. .She smelled different, even though she was- only, Ms sister Ruth, .be-
cause she was a girl. Neither.. Jamie nor even Arthur would have begged
him for a kiss or thrown arms about his neck when he gave it. Girls 'were
different. He was a man. There was that in it wMch he did not understand.
He went downstairs, feeling there^ was something between himself an.d his
mother now that separated them until eternity. He would never be near her
again. He did not know how .to get ne.ar her any. more. He 'had done
nothing, and yet. he had done, everything.'

He .went miserably downstairs to find that she had apparently forgotten
.Mm. She, was sitting by the fi.re .still in her good brown dress. But she had
put Maggie to bed and taken. off her own bonnet and cape.

. dunno/’ she said s.adly. “I .dunno but what well, have tO: go to Amer-
ica, after all. He*s not cornin’ back, Jonathan. I can tell it..”

They looked at each other.

^Wait, Mother,” he begged. Somehow no-w m.ore than ever he did not
want to leave England. /"Wait till the spring comes.” '

: His mother turned her head away from him. ""Springll only make me
want him more,” she wMspered. “Fm daft for him, Jonathan.”

He could not answer. All that he did not know forced itself ..upon Ms.
consciousness. Night and Ms father and his' mother, music and dancing with
Connie’s supple, plump' body in. his .nrms,. .and 'the circles of her bosom
when "he looked down and the smell of 'Ruth’s hair and all the pull between
human' beings which he felt: and could not understand. Millie and Edward
on their wedding night! He thought of them and turned his mind away
in self-disgust, and saw them still and loathed the sight.

""Whatever you say, Mother,” he said in a low voice.

""You wouldn’t mind, would you, Jonathan?” she said.

""Why should I be the one to say, Mother?” he replied.

""Lads usually like adventure and all,” she said, beseeching him.

He thought of the sea with hatred. He had never liked the sea, even
the bit of it he saw at Blackpool And 'beyond it were thousands of acres
of land. Twenty acres had been too much. Twenty acres of land had taught
him he wanted to teach school

""Everybody says Fm lucky to have so many sons to put on the land,”
his father had written. . . .

""It’s likely be fun for you,” his mother said.

He looked away from her. He felt somehow that he had made her sud-
denly want to go, he and Connie, though he^ had done nothing.

""Maybe,” he said bleakly.

There were in Dentwater countless small things he had not noticed until

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

now that he must leave them, and each became precious. If he had been
asked what he hated most to leave, he would have wavered between the
hours he spent at his desk by a window in the schoolroom, and those m
the kitchen of the cottage, especially the hours in the evenings when the
curtains were drawn, or in the rare mornings when, because he could see
the ships on the Irish Sea, he knew when he went downstairs the sun would
be shining across the brick floor. From the window in the schoolroom there
was very little view-a few old graves in a comer of the churchyard and
then the gray wall of the church. But even this bit of view seemed dear
when he knew that soon he would not see it again. He had never cared
greatly for church because he did not like the vicar’s wife. He knew his
mother was shy because of this elderly woman and did not like to go to
church when she had nothing to put in the collection box.

“Mrs. Clemony looks at me that sharp!” she said. “I daresay she thinks
I ought to be a better manager. But I manage the best I can. Tidnt as if
I had anything regular coming in like she does.”

He had therefore a strong dislike for Mrs. Clemony, a tall skeleton of a
woman always in black silk. Of the vicar he never thought unkindly and
not much at all, because no one did. He was a vague sort of a man who
never came out of the mists except to climb into his pulpit. Usually he
mumbled over the sermons he wrote out on half-sheets of paper, but some-
times he was upset about something, and then he had no paper but preached
out of his head, and then everybody listened to him, though no one could
imagine why he was so excited. Why, for instance, should an old man
whose white hair floated like a fog about his bald crown shout md wave his
sticks of arms in the pulpit and groan that God would punish England
because of what Englishmen were doing to the blacks in India? It was not
as if anybody in Dentwater had anything to do with such things. Jonathan,
hearing the talk after church, felt ashamed because he had been secretly
moved by what the vicar had said.

“Suppose them blackS'do feel things the same as us?” he had once asked
his mother when he went home to dinner.

“Those,” she corrected, and forgot to answer the rest of it.

On their last Sunda3rMr. Clemony had come into the pulpit, and the
moment he lifted his head after invocation they knew he was in one of his
rare fits. But this time he began talking about the wildest thing he had
ever talked about-“disarmament,” he called it, everybody agreeing to-
gether not to make guns— and then he ended by pra5dng for Lord Claren-
don. Who was Lord Clarendon?

After church the men gathered in the churchyard in the weak sunshine
of a mild day in late February to talk about it.

“Fair crazy, I calls it,” Mr. Haynes, the butcher, said. He plucked a
bit of dried grass from a forgotten grave and chewed it. . . when
Proosia is thinkin’ how to cut us up proper. If so be this Lord Clarendon’s

THE TOWNSMAN ■ 31

thinkm’ like that, why, England’s goin’ to the dogs, I say/’ He. spat and
looked as gloomy as his round red face allowed.

Jonathan, hanging about with the other older boys on the outskirts , of
the men, listened to this not so much for what it meant as for sorrow
that on another Sunday he would not be here but on the sea. It was like
thinking of how ■ it' would be if he were to die. Everything would' go on
exactly as it now did, only he would not be there.

At the dinner table he said out of his thoughts, ^Tm. glad the vicar had
one of his days today, Mother. I like to remember him the way he was
this mornin’, his hair slickin’ out and his eyes like lights,”

^^Queer how he looks two men,” his mother agreed, ‘‘so shadowy when
he doesn’t care what he says and today like a lighted torch.” '

So now, though he did not mind never seeing Mrs. Clemony again, he
did mind not seeing the old vicar any more. By the time he ever could
come, back to England, such a frail .old gentleman would be gone, and
he’d never hear him get excited and preach a real sermon again maybe.

It all became a melancholy death of many moments which Jonathan
scarcely knew he had loved until now. Mr. Hopkins, who could be so sharp
when he missed the ending of an irregular Latin verb, seemed now always
to be gentle, and his furrowed, too-early-aging face less irritable than ever
it had been. His very desk seemed impossible to leave behind, and the big
inkstain upon it dear and familiar. Archie Bainter he had in his private
heart considered a poor sort of chap, always talking of running away and
never doing it; and yet in those days he became intimate even with him
and found that Archie was a troubled soul who was afraid of himself be-
cause he had such dark thoughts of his father so that he wanted to kHl
him and was afraid he would. He confessed this to Jonathan, his pallid
face twitching and his hands trembling.

“I’ve wanted to tell somebody this long time, Jomiie, and didn’t dare.
Do you think I’m the same as a murderer according to the Bible?”

“No,” Jonathan said quickly, “no, I don’t.” He hesitated and then felt
it dishonest to accept this confession from Archie and say nothing himself.
“Fact is,” he said in a low voice, “I reckon I’ve been glad all winter that
my dad’s in America.”

“Ah, but he don’t drink,” Archie said.

“No, he don’t do that,” Jonathan admitted.

He wanted to go on and say what he felt about his father’s rough ways
and his big talk, and yet these seemed unimportant when he remembered
Mrs. Bainter, sometimes with a black eye, sometimes with a bandaged
head.

“He’s wrenched her wrist now,” Archie muttered.

“I wouldn’t stand it!” Jonathan said angrily. What he saw was not that
untidy, gawky Mrs. Bainter, but his own mother, pretty and fragile and
always neat m her little print dresses, her head hanging limp. He could
hear her voice, “Oh, Clyde, you hurt me!”

AMERICAN IRIPTYCH

' he said to Archie, swallowing as he spoke, agoin’ to

America jnst for my mother, to see that my dad is good to hen Else Fd
stay behind and let ’em go.”

And as. soon as he said it he knew that this really was why he was going,
although until now it had not been clear to him. Of course he must go to
America, so that she would have someone to defend her and take care of
her. Quietly, as he thought of it, this became his duty. He had not seen
Constance Favor since the night of the wedding. Now he resolutely, forgot
her.

What his mother would have done had he not seen his duty clear, he
did not think of asking himself. No sea had ever been so vile as this one,
and there was not time to think about anything except the next immediate
demand upon him from the three who were ill— his mother, Ruth, and Ar-
thur. This left him Maggie, who, once she became established to the
change, wanted nothing except to be on her feet. She had learned to ran
anywhere before they left Dentwater and would now ran, though the ship
heaved and threw her against the long lines of tranks in the steerage. Then
she fell and wept, her din mercifully lost in the crash of the rough seas
and the creaking of timbers. Whenever he could, Jonathan held her, though
against her will, to save her bruises and cuts. But there was not much time
even for this, except when he fed her upon his knee while he himself ate
at the rough board tables where twice a day they dipped into the tin bowls
of soup or stew or porridge which the sailors put down for the steerage.
The rest of the time, his eye upon Maggie, he went from one to the other
of the ones ill, or he ran to mitigate some damage Jamie had done.

^‘Dang you, Jamie,” he cried one day when a steward came to tell him
that Jamie had been caught upstairs in the saloon. He was goaded by weari-
ness and worn by the foolish, incessant motion of the ship and by Jamie’s
impudence, which sea air had only sharpened. *T wish you was good and
sick like the others is! Can you not stay where you’re told and not go
peekin’ and peerin’ into the first class where you don’t belong?”

“Fm as good as the folk there,” Jamie said, his freckles lost in a red
flush.

“ ’Tidn’t whether you’re as good as them or not,” Jonathan answered,
^Tt’s whether you can pay.”

Jamie, his flush drenching away, flung out at his older brother, ‘'You

THE TOWNSMAN

.don’t care what people thinks of ns! You’re just Mke a~a servant or soine-
thin’—takin’ things and never answerin’!”

don’t take that from you, anyways!” Jonathan- gave Mm, a clip - over
the head, and' then, at Jamie’s hurt astonishment, hated himself. ^There,
give over, will you, Jamie? I don’t want to be angered with you. On’y
you do allays say the thing that makes me so.” '

wish I was with my father!” Jamie cried, and choked and bit his lip.

“There you go again,” Jonathan said. “You want to be with him because
he spoils you and leaves you to -your own way.”

This was interrupted by a weak cry from Artie. “Jonathan! Jonatha'u!”

“See to Maggie a minute, Jamie,”- Jonathan ordered the sulky boy. “She
went around the bend there.” -

And he hastened to the berth where Arthur lay at one end and Ruth
at the other. Ruth was sleeping, though it was midmorning, but the little
boy sat up, ghastly and white and retching. When he had vomited he lay
back, trembling and spent.

“I be so sick,” he whispered faintly.

“You’ll be better sure,” Jonathan miswered heartily, though he was
afraid to see the child’s weakness. An hour ago he had persuaded him
to eat, but since they came aboard he had been able to keep nothing down.

“Shall I die?” he whispered again, turning up his great pale blue eyes
to see Jonathan’s answer.

“Mercy on us, no!” Jonathan cried. He leaned over and took the small
bone-thin boy in his arms.

“I don’t want to be put in a box and thrown in the water,” the child
wMspered, his eyes filling so that the tears overflowed them.

“Now, wherever did such notions come into your knowledge?” Jonathan
cried angrily. He was so miserable that he wanted to weep, and his only
refuge was anger.

“Jamie told me,” Arthur answered.

“That Jamie!” Jonathan scolded. “Wait till I see Mm! I’ll clip him harder
nor I did a minute ago. Lie down, Artie. I must go and find Maggie. Lie
still, or you’ll wake Ruthie, and then she’ll be sick, too. ’Tidn’t but ten days
more. Today noon we’re half gone. Then every hour brings us nearer the
good land.”

“We don’t have to go back no more, neither,” Arthur said, faintly
cheered.

“No, never,” Jonathan agreed, against his heart. To himself he said
steadily, “But Fli go back to England one day, when they’re all growed
up and Mother’s safe somewhere. Maybe she’ll go back with me— just her
and me.” He’d make her old age beautiful and full of peace if that hap-
pened. They wouldn’t even go back to Dentwater. He’d find a good school,
say in Devonshire, and a cottage nicer than the one they had left, although
how dear it had seemed when they left it that morning, empty of them
and all their life! It was so mad a thing to do— to walk out of a door he

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

loved and lock its knowing he would never enter it again! He peered into
the. upper berth where his mother lay. She was awake, the gray ship’s
blanket tucked under her chin.

“Is Maggie takin’' her food?” she asked when her eyes met his.

“Like she was at home,” he replied. “I don’t give her the, meat, though.
Mother, even if she wants it”

“Give her a bit,” she said apathetically. “She’s a great one for meat-
shell eat it raw if you let her.”

He longed to say something to comfort her and could think of nothing.

“Don’t you worry,” was all he could imagine to say.

“I cannot,” she replied simply. “I’ve not the strength for it.”

Outside, the sea thundered and beat upon the sides of the ship so that it
trembled in every joist and joint.

“Dear God!” his mother murmured and closed her eyes. Upon her
forehead sweat broke out, and she pressed her lips together hard.

He had no time, and yet day and night were endless. There were many
others in the crowded steerage who were going to America, but he had no
time to talk with them or find out why they went. Most of them were fami-
lies absorbed in themselves, but there were young men who were appar-
ently alone. One of these slept in the berth next to Jonathan’s, and that
was the first face he saw every morning when he woke in the murky foul
air. It was a blond English face, high-colored and big-nosed, handsome if
one took it all into account, as belonging to a huge man. They struck up a
sidewise sort of friendship, the man amused at Jonathan’s troubles, and
Jonathan struggling to pretend he was not nurse to three sick and all but
father to Jamie and mother to Maggie.

“Has your hands full, hasn’t you, young chap?” the young man asked
good-humoredly. “Here, give us the little tyke.”

The “little tyke” was Maggie, at that moment howling for food. He car-
ried her off with him to the breakfast table and did not bring her back for
an hour.

“Eats anything, don’t she?” he said admiringly when he brought her
back, smiling and full of food. “Ate my porridge with me after she’d done
her own, drank my coffee, and would ha’ smoked my pipe if Fd let her.
She’s my sort, she is— hearty-like.”

He came back every now and again to ask for her and carry her off,
and when on the last day they stood watching the harbor of New York
come into view, he handed Jonathan a bit of paper whereupon he had
written in a large round writing, “George Tenney, Screw Falls, Arkansas.”

“Got an uncle there, wi^ a sheep farm,” he said. “Write to me, will
you, boy? I’d like to keep up with that red-headed little tyke. I’m fond of
her. Makes me laugh, she does.”

Jonathan folded the paper and put it in his breast pocket and went down
with Maggie in his arms. Now nothing seemed of importance except get-

THE TOWNSMAN

ting all the children together and ready to put their feet on land. His mother
•and Ruth were dressed and lying in their berths, waiting, and he put Maggie
beside his mother. Jamie he had sequestered in a spot between two life
boats, on a strict promise that he stay there until he was fetched.

■ His mother was piteously thin, but she had been, able to d.ress ' herself
behind the blanket Jonathan had strung around , their corner. And Ruth
had' grown well enough to eat a little the last two days and keep it down.
But Arthur’s delicate system could not right itself. He lay, his shrunken,
face anxious with fear lest he be forgotten.

^^Jonnie, you wouldn’t go away and leave me, would you?’Vhe begged
in his little weak voice when Jonathan came to tell them New York , lay
on, the edge of the sea.

shall hold you in my arms until we iSnd Father,” Jonathan promised,
and he sat down on the berth beside the child.

He had told no one, but the great secret fear he had was that his father
might not be there on the dock. They had had almost no money left after
they paid for their tickets and cleared away the bits of bills they had at
the butcher’s and the baker’s in Dentwater. The shop they had sold, good
will and all, to a young couple just married in Dentwater, who were to
come to live in the cottage after their honeymoon. Otherwise there would
not have been enough for the bills.

He lifted Arthur up and wrapped him in a shawl and felt his heart
thick with fear at the child’s lightness and the looseness of Ms bones. Noth-
ing seemed to hold them together.

“Put your arms about my neck, there’s a good boy,” he said, and felt
Arthur’s little arm creep about his neck and lie there as feebly as a shadow
and scarcely more warm.

“Where’s home, Jonnie?” Arthur inquired.

Jonathan stared down at him. “Danged if I know,” he answered. “Any-
ways, somewhere in America.”

If his father were not there to meet the ship, what would they do? I’ll
have to find work, he thought, as soon as ever I can.

He sat on the edge of the berth with the thin, clinging little boy in Ms
arms. He was a grave youth of middle size and middling looks, neither
dark nor fair, nor anything that one would remember. People were passing
him quickly now, hurrying to the deck to see the approaching city. Still
he sat there, dreading to see the new shores of America, until at last even
they must go upstairs and be ready to leave the ship.

But Clyde was in the crowd, straining his eyes like all the rest for a
glimpse of them. Jamie saw him first.

“I can see my dad!” he screamed joyfully.

“Where?” Mary cried.

She had been watching the dock, her lips tight and her eyes narrowed.
She would not for any cause have told her children how fearful this new
shore looked to her, a bare terrain, with none of the soft, fulsome green

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

of England. She knew Blackpool was not beautiful^ , but, receding from
them, it had seemed beautiful, set and surrounded with the new green of
spring. But there were no trees here, nothing, to hide a fat city scattering
itself to the water’s edge. It looked, for all its houses, somehow still wild
and unsettled, as though the .buildings had been thrown up in haste, to
endure no more than a day. And this, Clyde had told her, was the biggest
city in America! Then all else must be wilderness Indeed. Around her
people' were laughing and shrieking with excitment. But she felt only a huge
mounting certainty within her.

I shall never see England again, she was thinking. And then she heard
Jamie’s scream and cried out and followed with her eyes the line of his
small forefinger and saw Clyde.

The certainty turned less dark without leaving her. ‘'Yes, that’s him,”
she answered, and said nothing when Jamie tore himself loose from her
hand and burrowed his way through the crowd like a mole underground
and climbed the rail and, holding onto a post, screeched at his father,
“Hello there, Dad! Dad-Dad!”

“Go and hold him by the legs, Ruthle,” she said.

Now that she could see Clyde’s face coming slowly clear, the certainty
seemed less crushing by the moment. She lifted Maggie, clinging to her
knees, and held her up, her arms still weak from her seasickness.

“See your daddy, Maggie!” she said.

She could see him now quite plainly. He wore the same suit in which he
had left England. But it had been a good rough brown tweed, bought to
last. His face was redder than it had been. That would be the sun and
winds. He had spoken of the unending dry winds, but she could not imag-
ine them. He was heavier than she remembered him, thicker and more
solid. Maybe the hard work had done him good. She felt a shy, unwilling
joy steal over her as she looked at him. A woman had to follow her man.
She had done what was right. It would not have been well if she had
refused to leave England, or had made him stay. He would have blamed
her for every failure after. Now she was always in the stronger position,
having done what he wanted her to do. It would not be her fault, whatever
happened. She felt lightened and suddenly easier than she had felt in many
months. That was the way a woman ought to feel when she could lean
upon the man.

Then she was aware of something fastened upon her face, a heat and
a pull, and she turned without will and found herself caught in the gaze
of Jonathan’s eyes, fixed upon her face. She could not understand this
look, but instantly she was uncomfortable under it, and he felt her dis-
comfort and looked away.

“Anyway, he’s here!” she said defiantly, though why should she need
to be defiant to her son about his father?

“Yes, he’s here,” Jonathan agreed, and voice and eyes and expression

THE TOWNSMAN

became as colorless as a mist. Behind that 'hiding mist he was not so much
thinking as feeling, with a sick disgust that still was of heat and not of cold^
that when these two who :were his parents came together It would be the
same thing all over again. His mother. would always yield to his .father. She
.had yielded even in being here. In his arms Arthur cried, astonished, ^Why
are you shaking Jonnie?”

“ ’Cause you’re a mortal heavy load,” Jonathan said gravely, and set
him down abruptly;

Now that he had them all here, Clyde Goodliffe could not do' enough
for them. He was a different man; they all felt it at oncC' a..nd saw It in. the
look of his face, in 'the freedo.m of his movements. In. England he had gone
sullen and slouching, and when he spoke he was either reckless or surly.
The recklessness had become a loud gaiety, and the surliness was gone.
He had pushed his way onto the ship almost before the ropes were thrown
out to hold her to the pier. He was there, and he lifted his wife off her
feet and kissed her while she clung to him. Maggie was frightened and
then angry and burst into weeping, and Arthur clung for a little moment to'
Jonathan because his father seemed a strange man. But Ruth and Jamie
fell upon him and seized his legs, and then he was hugging them all, even
Jonathan; and Jonathan, feeling the warm, strong clasp about his shoul-
ders, let his doubts die a little. Maybe America had done his father good,
and maybe they would all be happier.

‘‘Dang me, if this idn’t the happiest day of our lives, Mary!” Clyde
shouted. “Better even than our wedding day for me! Everything is wun-
nerful, lass! Drought’s broke out there. We’ve come just right. Wheat’s
headin’ out, and it don’t matter now if dryness does come back a while.
We’re sure. Hunnerds of acres, Mary, all stannin’ even in wheat—haid red
wheat like England never saw!”

“Thought you said it was com, Clyde,” she said.

“Corn’s wheat here,” he explained, “and maize is com.”

“Is it, now!” she cried, laughing. “Whatever made ’em get that mixed!”

They all laughed, and Maggie stopped crying.

“Now then, to the hotel,” Clyde said. “I got two rooms for us there.”

“But we’re not stoppin’ here, are we, Clyde?” Mary asked.

“To see the New York sights, we are,” he replied. “Well not be back
East in a long time, Mary, and I’ve planned three days’ good time before
we take the train. Come, Magsie, to your dad.”

He stooped to pick up Maggie, but she would not have him. Instead she
clung to Jonathan’s leg. They saw then the first glimpse of the old Clyde.

“Dang the brat!” he said with strong irritation. “She’s not glad to see
me!”

“She’s wee, yet—that’s all,” his wife said quickly.

“Silly, I call it,” he said carelessly, and turned away from her. “Come,
Jamie,” he said, “you and me against ’em all!”' ^

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■The three ^ of them went oS, Jamie between his parents; and Maggie^
seeing her mother go with this man, looked up at Jonathan and puckered
her face and opened her mouth to cry.

**Doii’t cry,” he said briefly. *T’il carry you,” Stooping, he took her up
in his arms and followed behind the family, Ruth clinging to one side of his'
coat and Arthur to her hand.

Long before three days were gone Maggie had forgotten that she was
ever afraid of her father. They had all forgotten everything that had ever
been unhappy, and they all believed in him. For the first time in his life
Clyde Goodlifle felt himself head of his own family. Every day he decided
what they would do and what they would see, and 'they followed him in
a sort of joyful dream.

‘^Now you listen to me,” he proclaimed. ‘T been plannin’ this all winter
long, how it’d be. I’ve it all fixed.”

“But it oughn’t to cost too much, Clyde,” his wife cried.

“Shut up, Mary!” he cried back at her, but with laughter. “It’s me has
made the money—it’s my money from now on. There’s more where this
came from. Besides, just lookin’ don’t cost money, do it?”

In the three days it was the looking that she liked best. All of the children
except Jamie were held back a little by her secret fear of cost, increased
for them by Jonathan’s silence when he felt her fear. Once this made Clyde
angry. They had been walking the streets and had paused in front of a
great hotel.

“Look at it!” he cried, as though he had made it. “Six stories high, it
is, not counting the fresco around the top and chimneys!”

They stood m front of it, staring upward. Jamie began counting.

“One-two— three—four—five— yes, it’s six, Father!”

“Carlton House.” Mary Goodliffe read aloud the name over the door.

A man in a bright blue uniform with many brass buttons looked at them
kindly.

“English, ain’t you?” he asked through his nose.

“They’re just from there,” Clyde said, and added quickly, “but I’m from
Kansas.”

“I reckon you don’t see anything like that out in Kansas, though,” the
man said, nodding at the building.

“Not yet,” Clyde admitted, ^*but it’ll come some day.”

The man looked doubtful and changed the subject “I reckon you’ve
heard of Charles Dickens?” he inquired.

“We have,” Mary replied. “It would be queer English folk not to know
him.”

The man kept an important silence, then spat before he spoke. “Once
when I was a young feller just come to this job, he et here,” he declared.

“No, never!” Jonathan exclaimed. He gazed up at the building.

“Such a crowd as we’ve never had since,” the man said. “All the big
fellows and their ladies. He was a little fellow himself, but he had big

THE TOWNSMAN 39

black eyesj and a way of lookin’ as though he was ready to bust out laffinf’
^^Jonathaii!” Ms mother breathed. ‘‘Think of' that!” ■

‘^He come back two years ago,” the man went on, enjoying the effect,
upon her. “But he was sick then. People said he was yellow and wrlnkied
and not the same man. Nobody saw him oncet.” ■

Mary Goodliffe was not listening. She turned to Jonathan.

“It makes me feel we aren’t so far from England,” she said dream%;

“It does,” he agreed.

Time after time he had read aloud to her out of the paper pieces of
stories Mr. Dickens had written. They were never' able to buy them all
so there were large parts they skipped. But Jonathan saved anything' he
found with them an, and Mr. Hopkins had sometimes given him papers
he had bought.

“We s’all have dinner here ourselves, then,” Clyde Goodliffe announced,
“What does it cost, my chap?”

“Too much, with all them kids,” the man said. “That is, if youTe thinkin’
of the big dinin’ room where he et. The coffee shop, of course, wouldn’t be
so bad—”

“Oh, no, Clyde, please!” Mary begged. “Don’t let’s— we aren’t fit to go
in such a place.”

“This ain’t England,” he retorted. “We’re as good as anybody here,”

“That’s right,” the man put in, grinning. “It’s only if you can pay for it.
That’s all we ask.”

“I can pay for it, right enough—” Clyde began.

But Mary interrupted him. “Clyde, you talk like a rightdown fool. We’re
plain people, and you know it—and I know it. This idn’t for us. If you
want to eat there, go on and eat alone. The children and Fll find a public
house or a little inn. Come, Jonathan— bring the little ones. Your father’s
out of Ms head.”

And she marched down the street, her head up, one hand leading Mag-
gie and the other Arthur, and Jamie and Ruth longing and uncertain.

For once Jonathan was sorry for his father. “Reckon well have to go,”
he said, apologizing for his mother.

But Clyde caught up with her in three strides and began his furious
argument with her, an argument wMch began that day and was to go on
to the day she died.

“You don’t unnerstand how it is in Americky, Mary!”

“I understand what’s right and fittin’ to my station in life that Fm con-
tent with because I was bom in it!”

“There ain’t no high and low here!”

“Who’s talkin’ about high and low? It’s folly and sense I’m talkin’ about.
And it’d be folly for us tO' push ourselves into that big fine place— us eatin’
in there!”

“But we’re as good as anybody!”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘"Don’t 'be, a' bom fool, Clyde Goodliffe! My father was a shopkeeper
and yours was a hired shepherd!”

, ""It don’t matter here,”

“It matters everywhere, so long as the world ■ stands, and no shame to
US' 'or anybody.”

""You’re the . same as you allays was-full of gloom and darkness and'
pullin’ a man down where he was again when he gets himself up a littie!”

""Wisest, if he gets where he don’t belong!”

Even the sharp bright sunshine of New York, such sunshine as they had
never seen before, was dimmed by the ferocity of this argument, untE
Mary Goodliffe, looking by chance at the shadowed young faces of her
children, ceased it abruptly,

""Here’s a place says beef stew for ten cents, and I could eat it fine,” she
announced, 4

And a moment Eater they were sitting around a clean, unpainted table
in a room half underground, and a fat woman in a checked blue and white
apron was saying kindly, ""Sure, you can take one portion for the two little
ones, and they kin have all the milk they want for nothin’. The boy looks
pindlin’. You must eat plenty, little feller, and catch up with the rest of
’em.”

She smiled at Arthur and planked thick white dishes upon the table.

""Here’s where we belong,” Mary said firmly, ""and all of America won’t
make me believe different.”

No one answered her, and so she relented, and in a few minutes it
seemed all over, and she was feeding Maggie bread dipped in stew gravy.

Within herself she was thinking with inevitable remorse: I’m too hard
on him— he meant to please me; and her eyes, soft with this remorse,
looked at her husband.

""Would you like to treat us to a bit of that queer cold pudding?” she
asked.

""Do you have ice cream?” Clyde asked the woman.

""Sure we do,” she answered.

""Then ice cream for everybody,” he ordered.

Then in showing off how he liked the frozen stuff which they ate so
gingerly and with such astonishment, he forgot to be sullen any more, and
when they came out and he hailed a passing horse car and they all climbed
in, Mary held her peace and let him pay for everybody except for the
two little ones. But even this she did in a whisper.

""You take Arthur, Jonathan, and I’ll take Maggie, There’s no use in
payin’ for them.”

""Where are we going, Clyde?” she asked aloud when the car began its
jolting way.

""To the Battery, to see the Aquarium,” he said proudly.

""Wen, if that’s what you say,” she agreed, and sat looking as peaceful
and yielding as though she had never told her husband he could be wrong.

THE TOWNSMAN

Jonathan, always watching her, caught 'her eye. She leaned over, to him.

‘Well just let your father enjoy himself,” she wMspered.

Her eyes, looking into' his, were bright with tender laughter. He felt
drawn to her, close to her, moved by their secret mutual understanding of
this huge child of a man who must be humored and circumvented without
his' knowing it. And in this partnership for the moment he was happy again.

The train rocked and jumped beneath them, swerving and bending and
swaying. None of them had ever been on a train before.

‘Tt does seem to me it doesn’t need to go so mortal fast,” Mary mur-
mured. She was sitting upon the dust-Med, plush-covered seat, with Ar-
thur’s head in her lap. He was feverish, and his lips were black with parch.

“You’ll find everything’s fast in Ameriky,” Clyde boasted. He was as
restless as Jamie, who now was occupying himself by swinging up and
down the car between the seats. The car was full of people— all, it seemed,
with children, so none could mind another’s child. “You sud be thankful
you’ve a train to go on,” he went on, folding and unfolding his legs.
“ ’Tidn’t so many years since folks went West in covered wagons— do yet
in some parts.”

“No part I’d go to,” Mary retorted.

“ ’Tidn’t too bad, Mary,” he argued. “It’s like a big picnic, the old folks
say. They camp together every night and spread theirselves in a circle
against the Indians, and inside they make a big fire and cook their food,
and everybody is chummy-like.”

Jamie, swinging past, caught the word “Indians.”

“Shan’t we never see Indians, Dad?” he inquired sadly.

“There’s always talk of ’em,” Clyde said. “But such few Indians as I
see in Kansas don’t look more excitable than ones that have been well
beat. It’s past me how folks was ever skeered of ’em.”

He had told them they were going to a town called Median. It was a
fine place, new and small as yet, but full of promise.

“You’d not be gettin’ me there with aU this family if they were still
wild,” his wife replied. She glanced at Jonathan. “Jonnie, fetch me a bit of
water again, there’s a dear good boy.”

Jonathan rose from the seat where he sat beside his father and walked
unsteadily down the aisle, thrown from side to side as he went. At the
end was the water cooler, now nearly empty of its tepid supply. He filled
the tin cup half-full, and then the slow stream ran dry. But it was late

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

afternoon, and before sunset they- would stop somewhere on this wild iat
plain and draw water from- a reservoir set like a sentinel tower in a desert.
He guarded the cup, trying to catch the movement of the train and save
Its spilling.

' ‘'Here’s all until we stop to fill up,” he said to his mother.

' ^ “Then Til dip a clean handkerchief in it . and wet Artie’s lips, while he
sleeps,” she- replied. '

in the morning the bustle' of people getting washed and fed and ready
for the day made the car tolerable, but as evening came on and they were
at the, threshold of another night of discomfort, gloom fell upon them all.

“See what’s left in the basket for Maggie, Jonathan,” she said. “Best
feed ’em all, maybe, before it’s dark.”

■Jonathan opened the big wicker basket, they had bought in New York
and filled with bread and salt meat and cheese and fruit and preserved
foods. Everything fresh was gone in these four days they had been on the
train. But by now Maggie had proved her ability to digest anything. She
took a wedge of bread and ham from Jonathan and sat down in the middle
of the aisle to eat it, unconcerned by the procession of legs that stepped
over and around her.

Jamie took his and gnawed it, his face pressed against the dirty window-
pane. But when Jonathan gave some to Ruth, she shook her head. She was
sitting quietly, her hand against her cheek.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Toothache,” she whispered.

“Is that why you’re so still, sittin’ there with your back to us?” he ex-
claimed.

She nodded, and at his look and voice of sympathy, her eyes swam In
tears.

“It’s hurt me the day long,” she said in the same whisper.

“And you didn’t tell,” he exclaimed.

“I didn’t want to bother,” she confessed. “Not when Artie’s so fevered.”

“But you could have told me,” he reproached her. “It would have eased
you, and maybe I could think of something.”

Her lips trembled, and she wiped her eyes and did not answer.

“Walt a minute,” he said.

He remembered that during the day he had several times seen a hard-
faced man four seats away drink from a whisky bottle he took from his
pocket. He had expected to see the man grow fuddled, but nothing of the
sort had happened. He had gone on playing cards with three other men,
hour after hour, in fierce concentration. He was still playing now as Jona-
than drew near.

“I ask your pardon,” he said sturdily. He hated talking to strangers, but
he could do it if he had it to do. He touched the man on the arm, and for
an instant the man looked up at him out of hard blue eyes.

“Whatcha want, boy?” he asked in a drawling nasal voice,

27602

THE TOWNSMAN

43.

little sister has the toothache,”' Jonathan answered. “Conid yon
let her have a drop' of that whisky to hold -in her month against it?” .

“Sure if s your sister has the toothache?” the man inquired.

The other three men, bearded dirty fellows, laughed.

“It’s her, right enough,” Jonathan said calmly.

“I never refuse a lady,” the man replied. He drew out Ms bottle and
handed it to Jonathan and went back to his cards. And Jonathan, tipping
Ruth’s chin, poured a little of the hot raw stuff into her mouth. She gave
a small scream of pain, but he encouraged her.

“Bear it, Ruthie— bear it a moment only and ’twill help. I’ve done It
myself. Ifs bad, but if you^ bear it, the ache grows numb, and then if s
wunnerM easy for a while.”

He corked the bottle and wiped her quivering face with her skirt and
then carried the bottle back. The man paused one moment to glance at it.

“Looks like the truth,” he said carelessly, and thrust it into his pocket
again.

Now the smoky oil lamps were lit, and instantly darkness snatched the
landscape away, and another night was upon them. One seat Clyde Good-
liffe took for himself, his legs hanging into the aisle. Maggie slept on a rug
put down on the floor between two seats. Mary sat immovable with the
sick boy’s head on her knees, and upon another seat Jamie lay against
Ruth. The whisky had made her tooth numb, as Jonathan said it would,
and she was sleepy with relief, and her head drooped against Jamie’s.
Jonathan sat opposite them, half-asleep, too, but waking every little while
to look across at his mother.

So the hours dragged over them. Once he rose to go over to his mother.

“Shan’t I take Artie on my lap so you can stretch out?” he asked.

But she shook her head, looking down at the little boy in her arms. “1
don’t like this long sleep,” she said. “Ifs more as if he was unconscious-
like.”

Their eyes met in mutual anxiety.

“We’ll get the doctor to him the minute we get to Median,” Jonathan
promised her.

“Aye, but is there a doctor?” she retorted.

“There must be in such a town,” he said.

He lingered a moment and then went back to his place. People were
sleeping everywhere in foolish helplessness. They looked like creatures in
a nightmare, he thought. Once in Mr. Hopkins’s room when he had stopped
for tea he had seen a book of pictures of people in hell. They had looked
like these people, sprawling in the convulsions of uncomforting sleep. He
sat wide awake while the train bolted them all through darkness to their
unknown end.

The train did not go to Median. They must get off at Fort Thomas, and
drive from there all day in what Clyde called a hack.

“A wagon-iike with a top,” he explained to them.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

The long jonmey was over, md they were sitting, as tidy as they could
make themselves, ready to get off, all except Arthur, who lay in Ms lassi-
tude, his head on his mother’s lap. He was no better, and yet no worse«
Today indeed, and now, he seemed even a little better. He had asked for
an egg.

‘‘There idn’t an egg here, my love,” his mother replied. “But surely
there’ll be one when we get there. Your dad’ll find you one, won’t he?”

“Surely will,” Clyde replied heartily. “An’ a few days of sun and wkd’l!
cure ’im. Never was such a country for sun and wind,”

“That I believe,” his wife replied. All the days had been full of hard
bright sunshine. Her head indeed ached with the light.

“The sky is surely bigger here than it was at home,” she said now,
gazing out of the window.

“ ’Tis only there’s nothing between us and it,” Clyde said.

No hill, no tree, no rise of any sort, indeed, cut off the sky from this
earth. The earth lay flat and pressed down around its circular edge by
the weight of the sky, heavy and metai-blue by day, and star-sprinkled
steel by night. The sky was infinitely more important here than the earth.
For the earth was unchanging. Nothing stopped the eye for mile upon mile
of even green grass. The handful of houses that made a town were mean-
ingless and passing. The sky was the pageant. The eye went to it again and
again. Stars were of enormous size and shining color, and the moon by
night was a spectacle. Sunrise and sunset were hidden by nothing and flung
out their color like the flags of armies in the sky. There must be noise
somehow to such color, Jonathan thought, staring half-fearfully night and
morning at the skies. But when the train stopped, the silence was profound.
At midday there was nothing between sky and earth. They shivered with
cold in the night and morning, and at noon were at the mercy of the
merciless sun; and women and children grew sick with heat. There had
been no rain since they landed.

But now it was all over. As the time drew near for them to reach
Fort Thomas, other passengers came up to bid them good-by. Half of
them had already got off in one place or another, and as they left had
given away what remained of food to those going farther. Now Mary
also divided bread and meat among those who went still farther, keeping
only what they might need before nightfall when they would have supper
in Median.

It was early morning. Clyde Goodliffe pointed to a few dots ahead and
to the right of them.

“It’s there,” he said. “That’s the Fort.”

“Why is it a fort. Dad?” Jamie asked.

“They had ’em against the Indians once,” Ms father explained, “There’s
forts all the way to California— regular hand-over-fist string of ’em. ’Course
they’re not wanted now.”

“It idn’t much of a place,” Jonathan said doubtfully.

THE TOWNSMAN

The traiii was galloping along, and he could see a scattering of eq-
painted wooden shacks. If Median looked like this, what woiiM he do?
He realized that in his mind Median had come to be something like a new
Dentwater, a neat little village with a church and a school and' a post office,
maybe, and the houses tidy-looking with their gardens held behind painted
fences,

’Tidn’t any reason why a fort should be big in these days,’’ Clyde
retorted. He picked Arthur up in his arms. The train was slowing down.
“After me, now, all of you,” he ordered,

Jonathan took Maggie on one arm and the big- basket on the other, and
ah together they stood, holding their belongings. Kindly people helped
them, and the man who had given the whisky for Ruth came up, hitching
his pants over his hips.

“Toothache still gone, sister?” he shouted, and when she nodded, too shy
to do more, he laughed. “Whisky’s good for ’most anything la these parts,”
he said. He was on his way to Oregon. Kansas, he said, was too civilized
for him. He had come lounging by to talk to them sometimes.

“WeB, I’m plain glad to hear ’tis civilized,” Mary Goodliffe said. “I don’t
desire to live in savagery.”

“Kansas don’t suit me, though, ma’am,” he said. “Too many people.”

He spat upon the floor a great blob of brown spittle, and she looked
away and whispered fiercely to Jonathan, “Don’t let the children step in
it—oh, the dirty beast!” She pressed her lips together and gazed resolutely
out of the window, and Jonathan could see she was determined not to
be sick.

“Clyde Goodliffe,” she said in a low fierce voice, “if you ever take to
chewiDg that stufi, we’ll not live in the same house longer!”

Clyde had burst out laughing. “I’ve tried it, though, lass. But I don’t like
it, luckily, if to chew would make me a grass widower.”

“Filthy, nasty, hateful!” she cried.

“WeB-well,” he said, pacifying her, “but good men do it, you’ll find,
Mary.”

“I don’t believe it,” she retorted.

But the tall chap was very good to them now. He helped Ruth to the
wooden platform and went back for their bundles and boxes until every'-
thing was piled around them, and swung himself on the train just in time,
yeBing to Jamie as the train carried him away, “When you’re growed up,
come West, boy!” A likable chap, Jonathan thought, though upon the plat-
form he had left behind him his blobs of spittle, too, so that they had to
heed them.

“Now wait here at the station till I see if Harvey Blake’s got the hack
ready,” Clyde told them. “I ordered it before I went, but there’s no tellin’
what’s happened between then and now.”

“Give me Artie,” Mary said. She sat down on a bundle and put out her
arms for him.

,46:

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Around tlie dusty platform had been standing six or seven men and three
women. At every station there had been such people coming out of the
unpamted wooden houses to stand in slack silence and stare at the train.
They all looked the same, colored an even hue by weather, their flesh
seasoned and dried by it. They were not Indians, and yet Jonathan was
surprised when now one of the women came forward and said in a soft
■voice, ‘Ts the little feller sick?” A foreign tongue would not have surprised
him.

“Thank you kindly,” his mother answered. “It was the sea upset him.
He was that seasick he hasn’t got over it.”

“Where you goin’?” the woman asked again.

^ “To Median.”

“Would it please you to come and lay the little feller on my bed? Thafs
my shack there.”

“No, thank you,” Mary said, half-alarmed. “We must be gettmg on.”

“Are you from around here?” the woman asked with a sort of gentle
hunger in her voice as though it were pleasant to her merely to talk.
She was looking at Mary’s garments as she spoke.

“We’re from England,” Mary said primly.

Jonathan could feel her deciding against this woman with the withered,
haggard face and sweet voice. After all, he could feel her thinking, this
was a stranger. The woman felt it, too.

“Well, rii be going,” she said vaguely. “I’m real sorry about the little
boy.”

She drifted back toward one of the houses, and one by one the little
group followed her until they were alone again.

“Are we home where we’re going?” Arthur asked, and opened his eyes
to inquire.

“Not yet, lovey,” she answered.

She drew an edge of her shawl over his face to shield him from the
sun. But mercifully at this moment great masses of billowing silver-edged
cloud had come up and were floating between them and the sun, the first
clouds they had seen for days. Between them the heat was dry and searing.
They watched for the next cloud, and when its edge touched the sun it was
like something cool and wet upon their flesh.

“I wish them huge big ones stuck there would come up,” Jamie cried.

He pointed with his finger to the horizon, where a massy base of dark-
gray cloud, silveiy-white, piled up and up into rounded peaks and turrets.
But they seemed immovable, so huge were they and so secure,

“They look stormy, or would in England,” Mary said. “But the clouds
have such space here I can’t tell their meaning. They’re merciful now,
though.”

They sat gratefully under the shade of a cloud as it passed across the
sun, and then, before it was gone, Clyde was there with the hack. He was
driving its two horses himself.

THE TOWNSMAN

47 ,

.. ^^Tliere’s a chap in Median wants to come back tomorrow,” lie ex-
plained. I’m to take it over, and be’Ii bring it back. Harvey don’t want
to take the- time. Thinks a storm is brewin’ and wants his hay in.”

He paused and looked at the sky with strange anxiety. “If it wasn’t for
Artie, Fd say wait and see what the storm is,” he said.

Mary Goodiiffe looked up in surprise. “A summer storm won’t kill" us,”
she said,

“Storms here are bigger than what you’re used to,” he answered.

“I’ll take the chance of storm rather than this child another night with
no doctoring,” she said decidedly.

“Well, I reckon if s best,” Clyde admitted.'

He got down and packed in their bundles and bags and the small trank,
and then they all got in and the horses began moving steadily across the
fiat green country— a green which the two dusty ruts that made the road
scarcely broke, for between them the same grass grew.

The stillness was intense, except for the soft ciip-clop of the horses’ feet
in the deep dust, a stillness felt and heard. It was more than absence of
sound. It had weight and pressure, and nothing moved except them as they
went across the endless green.

“There idn’t a solitary tree,” Jonathan said after a long while. And it
was an effort to lift his voice against the silence.

No one spoke. He saw then that they were all half-asleep. Even his
father, nodding, held the reins slack in his hands. But the horses seemed
used to this and went steadily on. There was, indeed, no choice for them,
since there was only the one road and no other crossed it. The pure air,
the warmth, the slow rhythm of the wagon’s movement had calmed them
into sleep. But Jonathan had never felt farther from sleep. He felt oppressed
and strange and half-afraid. Everything was too big here. In England one
knew the sea held the land together, so there was an end to it. It was a
fence around a field, and all within the fence belonged to you. But here the
land went on and on. No one could possess it. Even if you cut off a piece of
it, there would be all the rest

He sat holding Maggie, now sleeping, and felt afraid to be the only
one awake. For to his horror the great shining mass of cloud which had
looked so immovable upon the horizon began now to swell and grow and
spread out into brighter edges and higher peaks and more glittering towers.
And the land which had lain so quiescent began to break Into movement,
or it seemed movement, though he knew it was only the quickly moving
light and shade upon the green. But how could green look so dangerous
and livid when there was no sun upon it? While he stared, the grass
began to shiver and ripple as though the earth quaked beneath it. Was it
the earth that rumbled? He heard a deep soft roar.

“Father!” he screamed. At the sound of his scream Maggie woke with
loud crying and they were all awake.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■ ‘^Hey!” Clyde shouted. He wiped 'Ms hand across his mouth* One of the
horses tossed its head and whinnied.

‘‘Father, look!’’ Jonathan cried. He pointed at the sky,

■ “Oh, ifs goin’ to come, after all,” Clyde said, peering out. “Harvey said
it would, Fd better get out the curtains and be ready.”

They stopped, and from under a seat' he brought out oilcloth curtains.
“Help me, lads,” he ordered.

Jonathan put Maggie, still crying, upon Ruth’s knee, and he and Jamie
fumbled at the curtains,

“Like this, butterfingers,” Clyde commanded.

In a moment Jonathan had the way of it and was fastening them more
quickly than his father did. He was compelled by terror. He had never in
his life been so terrified. By seconds the sky had blackened, all except
the horrible scarified edge of silver to the black clouds, all except such
lightning as he had never seen in his life. The lightning in English skies
was soft torchlight compared to the great furious rents wMch this lightning
tore in the sky, and the thunder muffled drums compared to this crash
heaped upon crash. He felt his sweat pouring down him, his tongue dry,
his eyeballs tight in their sockets. Self-respect, pride, everything left him
except terror. He wanted to run as fast as he could, anywhere. But his
legs were lifeless, and he could not breathe. He felt Ms head swim. He
barely heard his father’s voice crying down the roar, “Now in with us all
—here’s the rain!”

He could barely crawl into the last curtain left open. His mother
screamed at the sight of Mm.

“What’s wrong with you, Jonathan?”

He could not answer. All his being was caught and held in a spasm.

“Ciyde—Ciyde— Jonathan’s gone daft!”

He saw them turn to stare at Mm. But he could not speak, not while
about Mm this crash and roar went on. And now here were the wind and
the rain, a waterfall of rain, rain that dripped and ran through every
crack. The horses were standing still, no more able to keep on their way.

He felt a sharp, strong slap on Ms cheek, and to his shame and agony,
he burst into weeping. His father had struck Mm.

“Come to!” he ordered.

“Clyde Goodlffle!” Mary cried.

“Shut up, Mary,” he said. “It’s the thing to do— the lad’s about to go out
of himself with fright. He’ll cry a minute and be himself.”

But he was not Mmseif . He kept shivering and crying, though he tried
to hold Mmseif back. Every time the lightning sprang at him and the thun-
der beat upon him, his being dissolved, and he lost himself. He could see
even his mother only dimly. She was distressed for him and frightened
herself, but he could do nothing for her because his being was dissolved.
Only at last, when the thunder grew less and the rain went on like a dark
wave, could he begin to gather Mmseif together again.

THE TOWNSMAN

49 .

They let him mercifully aloue. He had frighteH,ed the childreci, and they
sat staring at him. His father took off the curtains without speaking ' to
him, and his mother found a towel and handed It to him.

‘Wipe, your face and head, Jonathan, love,” she said tenderly. “You’re
wet' with your sweat, and the air’s cool. A terrible, terrible storm,” she
added kindly. “We were all' scared of it.”

He did not answer out of the depths, of his shame. The horses, wet and
shining, took up their way again, and the clouds retreated once more. He
did not know what had happened to him. He sat, helpless In Ms exhaustion.
After a long time his mother turned to him.

“Are you better?” she asked gently.

He nodded, and then he wanted to speak, but did not know how to
explain anything.

“I was struck-like,” he said.

“Not by lightning, or you’d not be able to say it,” Ms father put in.

“No,” Jonathan replied.

Then after a moment he admitted his enemy, a new enemy in this land.

“I reckon I was plain down scared,” he said in a low voice.

“I reckon,” his father said dryly,

“We must find a doctor for Artie at once, Clyde,” Mary said an hour
later. She swayed as she spoke, trying to take up in her own body the
unevenness of the muddy road.

“Oh, he’ll right himself in this air,” Clyde said heartily. “WunnerM air
it is. There’s hardly no doctors can do business in it.”

He did not want to tell her that there was not a doctor near Median.
Time enough for everything, now that she was here. Besides, it was true
that people were healthy. The lad would pick up now that he was off the
sea. He turned his mind to his plans— big plans they were, and he was
glad to see Jonathan had grown to be a man and could help Mm. It was
queer, though, the scare he took in the storm. He glanced at his son as he
sat beside him. A little on the small side, he thought. Jonathan would never
be as big as Ms dad.

“Want to take the horses a bit?” he inquired,

“No, thanks, Father,” Jonathan said. “Fve not driven ’em like tMs
before.”

“Take ’em,” Clyde said shortly and threw him the reius.

Jonathan bit his lip, but he took them; and the horses, seeming to feel
the change in the grip, tossed their heads and tried to quicken their pace.
It was impossible. The mud dragged at the wheels. But Jonathan, not yet
knowing that mud, sat erect and silent, his heart beating against his father.

Clyde watched him. A pale dinky man Jonathan would make, he was
thinking. Mary had put her smallness upon him, Edward was the better
of the two.

“Did Edward say he’d be comm’?” he asked abruptly.

5o:

AMmiCAN TRIPTYCH

“Not' a word,” Jonathan replied, without turning Ms head.

" “Edward’s, fixed well,” -Mary put in. “Some day maybe we’ll be thankful
there’s one lad at home with a good shop.”

“This is home now,” Clyde retorted.

■A strange wide place for a home, then, Jonathan thought. The heavy
leather reins pulled at his hands. He threw a quick , glance to the right
'and to the left. Ahead or aside, everything looked the same. The country
was flat under the long waving grass. The road was two muddy ruts divid-
ing north from south. Ahead of them the sun poured through a crack in
the clouds a clear yellow light over the wet grass.

“Can’t we see Median yet?” he asked.

“You can see it if you look at it,” Clyde retorted. He nodded, and they
all looked ahead. Against the yellow sky a low rectangular roof rose a few
feet above the horizon, and another and another, until there were perhaps
half a dozen.

“Them!” Jonathan said in a low voice.

“That’s never Median!” his mother cried.

“Median it is,” Clyde said half-suUenly. In the surrounding silence he
defended himself. Let ’em think what they want, it’s me has borne the
brunt of it, he thought. He had worked a hard year with no home and no
woman, and he had paid their way over the sea. Let ’em look at Median,
because there’s going to be time ahead when Median’ll seem wunnerful
and a place to remember, he thought.

“It’s goin’ to be a big place, Median is,” he said aloud. “They’re goin’
to make it the county seat, and there’ll be streets and houses and banks and
a school, even.”

“There’s no school now, then,” Jonathan said.

“There’s no need for it,” Clyde retorted.

“There’ll be need for it when we get there,” Jonathan said. But in tMs
one moment he had given up all hope for Ms own learning. Who could
teach Mm Latin here?

“Not for you,” Clyde said.

“There’re the little ones after Mm,” Mary told him.

“Readin’ and writin’ and a little arithmetic is all a man needs here,”
Clyde answered. “It’s one of the beauties of America,” be said in a loud
voice. “A man can get ahead with his hands and Ms own brains, and he
don’t need to sit with Ms nose in a book.”

No one answered Mm. He lifted his eyes up and caught a look at that
moment passing between Jonathan and his mother, and, leaning over, he
seized the reins from Jonathan’s hands and slapped the horses’ backs.

“Get along, there!” he shouted at them. It was good to speak to beasts
who could not jaw back at him.

But Jonathan, after the communication in that long look from his
mother, took comfort. Ever since he had come to this country he had
felt a wandering wretchedness in his mind. His mother had been so glad

THE TOWNSMAH

to see Ms father again that he felt he was no longer necessary to her. He
had remembered mournfully the year- in Dentwater when she had turned
to him as the man in her house, a year full of a'sweetoess pathetic because
now it was over. His father’s presence had thrust him back to being young
again and not much good. What he had done always for the younger chil-
dren when his father was away was by his father’s presence nothing but
woman’s work. .And he had been made miserable by his mother’s fond-
ness for this man. In the New York streets she had hong upon- his arm
with both her hands, and he had looked away when he saw it.

Now in her long look she called him back to her. She needed him sthl,
and in the warmth of this need he leaned over and took Maggie from
where she sat half-asleep against Ruth.

*^Give me the tiddlin’ thing,” he said gently. “^^She’s all in a heap.” He
lifted the fat little lump in Ms arms and held her tenderly in the silent
dusk.

Median was mud. They looked over the side of the wagon at the
scarcely moving wheels and saw the black stuff dinging to the spokes and
halfway to the hubs, a smooth, shining substance as thick as gum. The
horses stopped and snorted.

“Dang ’em, I s’all have to get out and lead ’em,” Clyde muttered.

“Can’t you puli over to the side of the street and let’s walk?” Mary
asked.

“Walk where?” Clyde retorted. He crawled along a horse’s back and
leaped down and sank halfway to his knees. “Come on here, you beasties,”
he said, and seized the bit

The wagon moved slowly again, a few inches at a time. They could hear
the sucking sound of Clyde’s boots as he forced his way. It was dark now,
and the faint waves of light wMch the wagon lantern sent out showed them
not even the side of the road, notMng but the thick surface of the mud,
smooth until it curled heavily about moving feet and wheels.

“Is Kansas all mud, then, Clyde?” Mary called.

He did not hear her. He was pushing the reluctant horses along, urging
them with the whip when they stopped. A quarter of a mile, and then
they saw faint lights on either side of the wide mud. The wagon swerved
and drew over and stopped.

“Here we be,” Clyde panted. He threw the reins over the backs of the
sweating horses and came to the side of the wagon and put out his arms

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tO' his wlfe/ ^TIl carry you both m,” he said, and lifted her with Arthui- m
her arms. “Hi there, Dread” he shouted.

, , A door opened, and in the light streaming out of the house stood a tail,
.thick .igure.

' “Hi there, yoorse'lfl” a deep voice roared.

Clyde staggered the four or five feet between wagon and door and set
his wife upon the threshold.

“There’s more to come,” he cried. He went back. “Now you, Ruthie,
and Jamie, the two of you.” He lifted them, one on each arm, and stopped
to look at , Jonathan. But Jonathan was already taking off his shoes and
socks. ■■ ■

“Fll roll up my trousers, Father,” he said.

A moment later he slipped down into the dark mud. In the tidy, meager
life of Dantwater he had not since he was a little boy felt his feet upon
the ground. But this was nothing like the smooth wet cobblestones or the
sandy soil of Dentwater. The mud sucked in his feet and his legs and
dragged him down until he was afraid. He clung to the wagon and lowered
himself by one hand, Maggie upon his right arm.

“Put your arms about my neck, Maggie,” he told her. She did so, and
he cautiously put down his other foot. He felt the mud bottomless until
he was ail but ready to puli himself up again. But it was more difficult
to pull up than to siok down. He let himself go, desperately knowing the
bottom must be there, and then felt it beneath him, the solid subsoil of the
land. He walked upon it somehow, pushing himself through the mud until
he stood at the inn door. He hesitated to step upon the floor, and then
saw that he need not. Muddy feet had come and gone upon the rough
planks until there was an inch of mud upon them like a carpet. His first
thought was for his mother’s skirt as she stood, still with Arthur in her
arms, looking about her. She was dazed, he could see. And Maggie sud-
denly began to cry in a loud wail.

Well, here we be, Drear,” Clyde said. “A lot of us, when we’re all
together.”

“We’ll feed you,” the man said heartily, “and bed you, if you don’t
mind where you sleep.” He turned his head and bawled, “Wife!”

‘What?” a shrill voice called back.

“Goodiiffes is here!” he shouted.

“Well, I never!” she screamed.

But she came running in, a tali, broad woman of middle age, with a

sharp face and dry sandy hair combed into a braided knot on top of her
head.

“Well, God save us,” she said, staring at them. “I didn’t expect you
till tomorrow, but come on.”

“I said maybe today,” Clyde told her.

“Today’s usually tomorrow with you,” she retorted, though not un-
kindly.

THE TOWNSMAN. ; 53

; But Mary, seeiug another woman, came to herself. ‘‘Could I get a doctor
for my little lad?^’ she a,sked. “He’s very ill.”

“A. doctor!” the woman repeated., astonished. “Why, I hav.en’t seen a
doctor in these parts for nearly a year. There was one last summer goia’
to the coast.” She turned to her husband. “Henry, when did you hear tel!
of a doctor?”

He shook Ms head. “Don’t know,” he said. They both came over to look
at the child. “Is he asleep?” the woman asked.

“He just lies so,” Mary replied. Her lip quivered, and tears came into
her eyes. “Clyde, if I’d ha’ known there wouldn’t be a doctor in Median,
I wouldn’t ha’ come,” she said fiercely.

“Oh, now, Mrs. Goodiiffe!” the woman cried. “You’re, tired. Why, ifs
a wond.erM country. He’M get well I’ll give him a little mush and milk..
Lucky we’ve got a cow. Lay him in here on my bed.” She moved to a
doorway and put aside the blanket that was its curtain, Jonathan put Maggie
down and, stepping forward, took Artie from his mother.

“Ill carry him,” he said. He went into the room behind Mrs. Drear and
laid the little boy down, while his mother followed. Beneath even Artie’s
lightness the straw of the mattress rustled. But it was a bed, covered with
blankets and a woven counterpane of blue and wMte. Artie did not stir.
Mrs. Drear leaned over him and felt his forehead.

“I’ve seen ’em come back from the very jaws of death,” she said
solemnly. “It’s the air. I’ll fetch some hot milk.” She bustled away, and
while Jonathan and his mother stood beside the bed his father came in.

“Drear’s the right sort,” Clyde said. “He says we can stay in tMs room
for the night. Seems their other three rooms are full of a party going West.
The rain’s upset everything. They couldn’t go on like they expected. Drear
and Mrs. will sleep in the kitchen.”

“But however—” Mary began, and stopped. Mrs. Drear came in again,
a bowl and a spoon in her hand.

“Now then, folks,” she commanded them, “Jennet— that’s my daughter
—is ready to feed you. Get along and leave this little feller to me.”

She sat down and began with a sort of clumsy gentleness to put the
milk between Artie’s lips. Without opening his eyes he swallowed.

“He’s ail right,” Clyde exclaimed. “Come along.”

“You all go,” Mary said. “I shan’t leave Artie.”

“i’ii come back quick then, Mother,” Jonathan said.

He followed his father into the other room. Ruth was still standing in the
middle of the muddy floor, holding Maggie’s hand, and Jamie beside them,
his hands in his pockets, staring at everything about him.

“Come along,” Jonathan said and lifted Maggie up. They sat down
beside a long unpainted table. A red-headed young girl with a dirty blue
apron came in with a wooden bowl of mush and a jug of milk. She set
them down and went away and came back with bread and slices of thick
bacon. The rain had begun again in a long droning roar upon the roof.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Lucky we made it,” Clyde said. “Lucky I got the horses put away
even.”

Jonathan took Maggie on his lap and made ready to feed her, and as
he did so a thin stream of water began to patter on the table from the
roof. Drops flew into his face. He moved and the girl Jennet, seeing it,
went out and brought in a pan and set it under the leak as though she were
used to it. Jonathan watched her.

“Does the roof always leak like this?” he asked.

She looked at him with a sudden glint in her large greenish eyes. “No,”
she replied impudently, “only when it rains.”

She went away in the midst of loud laughter from Clyde and Mr. Drear,
her face straight but her eyes glittering with laughter she would not allow
to escape.

Jonathan hated the laughter. There was nothing to laugh at that he could
see. He hung his head and made an ado about feeding Maggie, refusing
her bacon and insisting upon the mush and milk so sternly that she was
unexpectedly cowed in this strange place and swallowed the spoonfuls that
he ladled into her Open mouth. He ate between whiles, loathing the food
and yet too hungry to refuse it. His mother was a dainty cook, and he
was accustomed to goodness in her simple dishes. But he ate, and when he
was fed lifted Maggie and took her to bed in the other room. Mrs. Drear
had gone, and his mother was alone.

“Where’ll we edi sleep?” she said when he came in. She was dazed, he
could see, and dismayed.

There U be pallets,” he said. “I’ll just lay Maggie here by Artie.”
Artie had not wakened. She watched him while he put Maggie down.
She was so silent that he was startled and looked at her. Her eyes were
full of fear.

“Your father’s brought us to a terrible country,” she said. He could not
deny it. But he cried out to her what he had always cried.

“Don’t you mind. Mother. I’ll think of some thing )”

^at he was thinking of was how to get her back to England. He would
and work, and he would save and put together enough to take her back
agam. And even while he thought, his father came tramping cheerfully
into the room, loosening his belt as he came.

“I’m fun and sleepy. lass,” he cried. “Mrs. Drear will put down the

“ tlie bed, eh, Mary?”

Mother hasn’t eaten yet,” Jonathan said angrily. “Go on. Mother, md
1 11 Sit here m your place.^’

Go on yourself,” Clyde said in good humor. ^Tm going to take off
my clothes as soon as Mrs. Drear’s out.”

She was coming in as he spoke, her arms fuU of quilts. “Don’t stop

Mr Cmdrff ?v ^

Mr. Goodliffe? Your young man ”

“I shan’t sleep in here, if you please,” Jonathan broke in.

THE TOWNSMAN- 55

“Oh, Godamercy/^ Mrs. Drear said laughing, “sleep m the other room
then. Jennet takes a corner, but you needn’t take the same I
, “Haw!*’ Clyde burst out, but Mary turned suddenly as lofty and coo! as
a lady. She put her hand on Jonathan’s arm.-

“Well go. out now. Do you see to Artie, Clyde,” she said. Jonathan, felt
her .small hand strong upon Ms arm, and as they went out, “A downright,
coarse woman-as if you’d look at a serving wench, Jonathan!” she mur-,
mured. as he lifted the blanket curtain.

He could see in the morning the name of the' tavern. A !o,ng, broad
shingle was na.iled across the- door, and upon. if was painted in white the
letters “American House.” Above it upon a square board was a stM-look-
ing gilt fowl meant to be an eagle. The rain continued to fall The house
was full of people, for at breakfast seven men came' down a ladder from
the attic. To wash they held a tin basin under the streaming - eaves and
brought it in. Jonathan, after a few questions which always brought laugh-
ter, asked no more, but watched to see what others did.' Thus he waited,
and in his turn caught rain water and washed Maggie’s face and hands and
caught again and took the basin in to his mother. She, he perceived the
moment he saw her, was in a mood of black despair.

Mary had spoken to Mrs. Drear about a house, and Mrs. Drear had
laughed.

“Lord love you, dear,” she said. “Houses don’t grow here—they have
to be made.”

“You mean there isn’t a house to be had in the town?” Mary asked.

“There ain’t but six houses besides ours,” Mrs. Drear said. “Some day
we’re goin’ to be a big town, but everything’s got to begin, I guess.”

Mary did not answer. She had got up early and had dressed herself neatly
and had seen to the chOdren. Artie was a little better. But she had gone
into the kitchen for hot milk and what she saw had sickened her. A tum-
bled dirty pallet was still on the door, and the girl Jennet was sauntering
about her business of breakfast, her face unwashed and her red hair un-
combed.

“I shan’t eat until I’m in my own house,” she told Clyde when she was
back.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed dressing himself. “Don’t be so
choice, Mary,” he said. “They’ve fed me when I hadn’t food.”

“Clyde, how much money have you?” she demanded.

“None— or as good as none,” he said frankly. “But I’ve got the promise
of work. Drear’s puttin’ up a chicken coop and says Fm to do it.”

“You!” she cried. “You never drew a saw in your life.”

“I can try it,” he retorted. “It don’t 'take brains to draw a saw. Besides,
Jonathan s’al! help me.”

She did not answer. Jonathan must help .indeed until they were started.

“I must get a house,” she said, half to herself. “But how?”

AMEmCAN TRIPTYCH

‘*We’!l, build one of sod,'^ fee replied. ■

“Sod!” slie repeated.

' ;“Sod,” fee said irmly.

It was at this moment tfeat Jonathan came in, bringing the tin basin of
rain water.

“Jonathan,” she said, turning to him piteously, “there’s only sod for
houses here— ”■

He had not the least idea of what a sod house was, but he cried out with
all Ms ' heart to comfort her.

■ “Never you mind, Mother!. IfU be the best sod house there is!”

'They lived eleven days and a half at American House. On the second, day
the rain cleared, but they were still imprisoned by mud. The door of the
inn looked out upon an empty square, and from tMs square the grass was
worn away by wagons and the feet of horses and oxen, so that now it was
a field of thick dark mud. Once or twice, sometimes as much as four times
a day, a wagon straggled up the road, painted with mud. The beasts that
pulied it were caked to the eyes, and sometimes the man leading them had
fallen and was an image of mud from which Ms eyes looked out whitely
like a ghost’s. The inn grew unbearably crowded. Quarreling and laughter
and the crying of children crowded the air with noise. Jennet was silent
with endless work until Jonathan took to carrying in the bowls of food
for her and setting them down on the table. In a moment the food was
gone. He could not see how it was that these men ate so quickly. The only
silence of the day was while they ate, throwing bread into their mouths,
gulping down great mugs of coffee, between dishes of meat and potatoes.
They took the hunks of salt pork with their hands to chew off huge bites,
and he was sick at the sight. Seeing Jamie imitating them, he cuffed him
sharply over the left ear.

His father saw it. “WhatTe you heatin’ Jamie for?” he cried at Jonathan.

“I wasn’t doin’ anything,” Jamie muttered sourly.

“You know what you were doin’,” Jonathan said. “You know what
Mother don’t like!”

“And I say if there’s heatin’ to be done, I’ll do it,” Ms father retorted.

For answer Jonathan took his plate beside Ruth and ate slowly and
fastidiously, cutting his meat before he ate and drinking his coffee quietly.
He longed for a cup of tea, but there was none. Everybody drank mugs
full of bitter black coffee sweetened with molasses. It made him gag unless
he sipped it slowly.

In th^e few days he had completely forgotten school and books. He had
first to find the means of living at all— somehow the shelter of a home and
privacy and quiet. Artie was still in bed, a little better, or so he seemed.
Ruth stayed with her mother, away from the roughness of men coming and
going. But Jamie was excited and happy. He hung about the men listening
to them and copied their swagger and their ways. And no one could stop
Maggie from running about meddling everywhere. In these few days she

THE TOWNSMAN,

had grown, pert and,, willful because they alMaughed at her and Jennet
spoiled hen with food and made her bold to disobey Jonathan so that one
day when he told her to come, and be cleaned, she cried, “No— no!” and
ran to Jennet, and Jennet laughed. He went glowering to find his mother.

“If we don’t, get away from here,” he said, “Jamie and Maggie will be
out of hand forever.”

His mother sighed. “I wish Fd never come,” she said.

“But if Dad was set on Am, erica?” Jonathan asked.

“Fd have let him have it without me,” she replied. “Almost,” she added,
seeing his look.

BY' the seventh day the mud was drying and shrinking in cracks. Uiide,r-
neath the' thick skin of its surface was still softness, but the skin held. By
noon of that day the travelers were gone, and there were a few hours be-
fore night brought three more men, cattle drivers from Texas who had
driven cattle up the trail to the Northeast.

In the afternoon’s silence Jonathan sat down on a bench by a window in
the big room and took a small book from his pocket. For the moment there
was nothing to do, and in the emptiness he was aware of a yearning to
read and to think. He had brought a few books with him, and this one
was Virgil. He had not opened a book since he left Dentwater. He had
scarcely opened this one when Jennet came in. She had taken ofi her
kitchen apron and had brushed her red curly hair and washed her face.
She sat down at the long trestle table, yawned, and laid her head upon
her arms.

“I could sleep till my hair turns white,” she said.

She had not spoken to him since the first night. He saw her swinging
pots on and off the stove, mopping the tables with sweeps of her long
arm and a dirty rag in her hand.

“You have to work hard,” Jonathan said politely,

“Dog hard,” she agreed carelessly. Then she sat up. “Want to know
what Fm goin’ to do?”

“What?” Jonathan answered, seeing that she expected it.

“I want to go West, clear to Californy,” she said, “Everybody’s goin’
West”

“But what would you do?” he inquired, astonished.

For answer she lifted her head and looked at him from under her
drooped eyelids. Her pale eyes, as clear and pale a green as liquid shadows
of trees upon water, gleamed out at him.

“You’d like to know, would you!” she said. “Well, I won’t tell you!”
-- She.' got up and saunteredTo the door . and., stood there leaning. a,gainst.
the jamb, looking out. And he, bending his head over his book, wondered
what she meant and did not dare to ask.

Mary, before dawn, urged Clyde in his bed, “It’s a fair mornin’, Clyde,
Hadn’t you better get up and have the start on the day?”

'58

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

He was an incnrably late sleeper, one of those who, slow to sleep at
night, seem to find their midnight when others are rising for work.

'%et me be,” he grunted without moving.

She lay a few moments longer until every muscle in her body ached
to be up and at . work. She could endure it no more, and she rose. The
moment she stepped out of bed Ruth sat up, and Maggie rolled from the
same pallet to the floor and picked herself up, and fell again, tangled in
her long nightgown. Jamie was already up and outdoors somewhere. At-
thur stirred and called out faintly, ‘‘S’all I have a drink, Mother?”

'^You shall, this minute,” Mary replied. He was better these last two
days, but how weak! She longed to give him an egg, but there was not a
fowl to be found in Median. She could not believe it, but so it was.

“I always aimed to get some hens,” Mrs. Drear had said, ^'but I ain’t
got around to it ”

Mary, hearing such a confession of shiftlessness, determined the mo-
ment she had her own roof to find a few hens somehow.

“Clyde!” she called sharply. The sun was streaming in the small win-
dow. “Ifll be noon!”

Two days of full time, Clyde had said, and they could get up a sod
house; that was, provided she did not have her notions. A sod house could
be laid up rough or smooth, he said, sixteen feet wide and twenty feet
long.

“I want it smooth,” she said without waiting to find out what “smooth”
was, “and there must be four rooms to it, Clyde, for decency.”

This was what he called “notions.” “Dang you, Mary,” he said, “you
can’t be finer nor everybody else in America. It makes ’em mad. Why,
nobody’s got four rooms in a sod house in Median.”

She had finally agreed that, for the present, if he would do it quickly,
she would manage on the two rooms. Jonathan will help me, she thought
privately.

She watched Clyde scramble out of bed and into his clothes. He could
be so active and quick when he was awake, but half-asleep he moved as
though he were drunk. She hurried out to see to his breakfast.

In the other room Jonathan was ready and dressed in his oldest clothes.
“The horses are ready, Mother,” he said. “Where’s Dad? I’ve hitched ’em
to the plow.”

“Hell be along as quick as I can make him,” she replied. “Where’s
Jamie? He’s to help.”

“So I told him,” Jonathan said. She went on into the kitchen, and he
let her go without telling her that half an hour earlier he had pulled Jamie
out of a wagon going West. The boy had hidden under the big cover and
had been found at the last minute by the owner, a tall New Englander. He
had not let Jamie know himself discovered. Instead, grinning slightly, he
had gone to find Jonathan.

“Reckon I’ve got some of your property by mistake,” he said.

THE TOWNSMAN

lonathaii, foliowing him, saw Jamie cmucWng behind a small:, bureau
among mattresses, pots, a clock, and bundles of clothes. He reached In
and with an arm suddenly strong pulled the boy out and clapped Mm. hard
over the head.,

'‘What are you in there for?” he asked severely.

"I don't want to stay here,” Jamie said. His round face was red. "I want
to go West to where the gold is.”

"Gold!” Jonathan said scom,fully. He held Jamie firmly by the collar
and slid him back to the inn and sat him down on the doorstep.

"Think of our mother!” he said, and met Jamie’s rebellious stare with
a gaze so stern that Jamie’s eyes fell.

"Get over to the bam,” Jonathan went on, "and see if the horses are
fed. Mr. Drear says we can borrow them and his plow today.” He did not
take his eyes from Jamie until he disappeared into the sod-house bam where
the Drears had once lived. To think of Jamie, wanting to go West, like
that girl Jennet! As if we wasn’t at the ends of earth already! he thought,
before his mother came back, and went outside to wait in the sunshine.

fmj

Clyde, driving the horses, pushed the plow deep into the sod and then
looked behind him.

"Dang the beasts,” he said to Jonathan. "They’re cuttin’ the furrows
everyhow.” He stopped and wiped his forehead.

"Give me a try,” Jonathan said. He had hardly been able to endure the
wavering of the furrows. Drear had told him the furrows most be even
deep and even wide, or the house would be crazy. He handed his spade
to his father and gave a sharp look to Jamie, who was piling the sod
squares up on the float. In a little while there would be more help. Henry
Drear had promised to come as soon as his chores were done, and three
more men he could bring later in the day.

"Fll take spade, then,” Clyde said. "’Twill be easier to trust my own
brains instead of beasties.”

Jonathan took the reins and held them tightly, forcing the horses to
slowness. They were young, and the morning air and sunshine made them
:gay, and there was grass green, beneath their feet. He held them mercilessly

His mother, when they left her at the door, had said to him quietly
so only he could hear, "Keep them to work, son, else we’ll never get the
house done.”

AMERICAN. TRIPTYCH

'1 will, Mother,” he had promised

In his mind he understood the process of this building with the earth. He
had talked it over with the Drears, asking a question now and then, and
he had gone out to the old sod-house barn and studied it, and walked a mile
down the quaking surface of the drying road to look at a sod house. A
woman was hanging out clothes and stared at him.

“Do you mind if I look at the house?” he asked politely. “My dad’s
building, we’re newcomers, and I want to see how they’re done.”

She was ready and eager for talk and led Mm in. He had been sickened
with what he saw in the squalid windowless hole, but he said nothing. No
reason why there shouldn’t be windows in a sod house, he thought, nor
why filth should lie on the floor. It’s these folks.

Nevertheless, he determined as he took pains to drive his furrows deep
and straight that they would have four windows somehow.

“Don’t never build against the river hill,” the woman had chattered.
“The rattlesnakes come out. My of man built us a dugout on the river
bank so’s it would be handy to fetch water, and soon as we lit a fire the
snakes came out. We moved quick, I kin tell you!” She laughed and showed
her snaggy teeth.

“It’s not to be by the river,” he said briefly, and wondered if by a river
she meant the sluggish little brook that crept south of Median under some
small reedy trees.

The first day it did not rain his mother had stood looking over the
endless grassy plain in which Median stood.

“Where are all the trees?” she had asked, bewildered by their lack.

“Why, there’s the cottonwoods,” Mrs. Drear had said, and made them
sound like a forest.

“We’ll plant trees, Mother,” he had said.

“Ifs grass country, you’ll find,” Mrs. Drear replied.

But he was going to plant trees somehow about his mother’s house.

“Does your floor always puddle?” he asked the slatternly woman.

“Only in spring thaws or so be it rains hard in a summer shower,” she
replied carelessly.

“Well, good-by,” he said at last, and went away thinking he had learned
more from her what he did not want than what he did. And with his
father he chose a site on Henry Drear’s land, two acres whose rent was
to be paid in such labor as Drear might ask. Clyde was very lordly about

k. ■ ■ ■

If I be horse tradin’, as I s’all be come good weather,” he said largely,
“Jonathan’ll fill the obligations.”

The site was a little far from the road, but it stood high enough, though
not a hill, to run of water and have no puddled floors. A little far, but
Henry Drear said certainly, “Another year or two like Median’s growing,
and it’ll be the middle of the town.”

THE TOWNSMAN

The SUB beat down by nine o’clock, and Clyde sat down to rest, groaning
and granting. , .

“Seems a lively long time afore the men come,” he said,

Jonatlian did not answer. He had never loved the earth, and even in
England plowing the small fields had been toil. Here a field stretched to
the sky, and he liked a limit to ever37thing. Yet to plow these furrows and
cut them into squares and lift them in fiat, solid mats of substance was
good work. It w,as: the air, perhaps. This air cleared the brain and fed the
blood like food. It was clean and swept by the wind. He ' could even see
the wind here. It began far away in a ripple of light on the" long even
grass and came rushing on like waves upon the sea, fresh and full of power,
wave after wave.

“Is there always wind here, Dad?” he asked, watching it.

“Always,” Clyde replied. “And wait till it ties itself into knots in a
cyclone! A whirligig of a thing a cyclone is, grabbin’ the earth and pullin’
at the sky and movin’ both.” He took out his pipe as he talked. “A big
large thing the wind is here,” he said, “like everything else in America.”

Jonathan did not answer. Across the grass he saw Henry Drear and three
men coming, and he was ashamed to have them see his father sit smoking
so early in the day’s labor.

“Take the horses again, Dad,” he said abruptly. “Fll lend a hand with
Jamie.”

But to his anger a few moments later Jamie was gone. He had taken
the chance of the men’s coming to slip away from Jonathan’s eyes and run
through the grass toward the town. Jonathan saw him and shouted, but
Jamie did not pause.

“Fll go after him,” he said firmly.

“No, you won’t,” Clyde said. “Leave him— he’s too small for such work
anyway.”

Tlie men were there. One of them was leading a team of mules, and
Jonathan saw that which put everything else out of his mind. One of the
men was black.

“Samuel Hasty, miller— come last year from Vermont,” Henry Drear
was saying, “and Lew Merridy, storekeeper and his mules, and this here’s
Stephen Parry.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Samuel Hasty said. He was a small man with
along nose on a long face. ■

“Glad to see you,” Lew Merridy said heartily, putting out his hand to
Clyde and then to Jonathan.

But the black man did not step forward or put out his hand. “Howdy,
sub,” he said in a soft bass voice and at once began to work, lifting the
three-foot strips of sod to the float.

“Well, dang it, how the town grows!” Clyde said,

“Median grows,” Henry Drear agreed. He spat into the grass. “She
doubles her population every year or two. Ten years ago when I put up

62 .

A&-1ERICAN TRIPTYCH

Americaa HoEse at the crossroads I was fee only white man in hundred
miles, I reckon. Now they’s a hundred people here, ain’t there, Hasty?'®

' ■ "A hundred and three,” Samuel Hasty said.

**Twiiis was bora' last night in my house,” Lew said shyly.

“A hundred' and five, by God!” Drear roared. "'Damn it, Lew, you’re .a
good citizen!”

None of them were working except the black man, who said not a word;
and Jonathan, feeling young and unnoticed, began to help him. He could not
keep from looking at Stephen Parry. He, had never been close to a black
man before. -When his father had written to them' in England of Negroes
and Indians, Ms mother had sighed, ''The country’s full of savages.” But
they had seen very few Negroes and as yet no Indians. Now he watched
secretly the strangeness of black skin upon a human frame. But there was
nothing savage in this man, he thought. His skin was not coal black, either.
There was a light in it. He was fee color of chocolate, and his head was
handsome. His hands were most strange, so dark-fleshed, but fee palms a
pale, dead pink. Jonathan was shy of him and tried not to be.

'Tfs good of you to come and help us,” he said stiffly.

"Folks has been kind to me, too,” the man said in his soft deep voice.
"Folks is mighty kind around hyeah.”

"Have you been here long?®® Jonathan asked.

The man hesitated, then answered, "The endurin’ time of fee big war I
was hyeah.®’ He hesitated again and saw the men were not listening to
him, only this slight, gentle-faced young man. "I run away, sub, in de eaily
days of de wah. I was a slave, suh.®®

Jonathan looked at him, revulsion in Ms bosom. A slave!

"I am glad you ran away,” he said indignantly.

"We all free now,” the man replied quietly,

"Float’s full!” Henry Drear shouted, and Merridy began to hitch Ms
honses to the sledlike frame. He smiled at Jonathan, a kind, comprehending
■smile. ' '

"Want to come along and help unload?” he said.

"Certainly, sir,” Jonathan replied.

He walked beside the float as it slid over the long grass.

"Think you’re goin’ to like the country?” Lew Merridy asked.

"I don’t know,” Jonathan replied.

Merridy looked surprised and then laughed. "Sure you will,” he said.
"It’s a great country for a young fellow like you~greatest country in the
world.”

Jonathan did not answer. He was not used yet to fee talkativeness of
the Americans, nor to their shameless boasting. England was a great coun-
try, too, he told himself, but he would not say so. It makes things common-
like to talk about ’em, he thought, and worked In steady silence until Lew
Merridy gave up talk and whistled instead, a whistle as loud and clear as
a wild bird’s.

THE TOWNSMAN

'63

That night the house was drawn to its shape and guided by the North
Star. They had worked all day plowing, cutting, and carrying the strips of
sod to where the house was to be. Then, when the North Star appeared in,
the darkening sky, Henry Drear drew a line direct from its point and
paced off twenty feet and drove in the stakes.

, ‘There,” he said, “the house sets right' It’s straight to the Northern.
Star.”

They went back to the inn, tired and hungry.

, “Come in and have a drink,” Clyde said- at the door to the , men who
had helped him. “It’s ill luck to a house not to drink when the founda-
tion’s decided.”'

Only Stephen Parry shook his head to refuse coming in. “Thank you,
suh, but I’ll be gettin’ along,” he said. He touched his old straw hat to
them all and went away.

“Good man, Steve,” Henry Drear said as they entered the inn. “He’s
as good as anybody and he knows it, but he don’t press it Kansas is a
free state and all that, but a nigger’s got no business settin’ down by a
white man anywheres.”

“Turns the stomach,” Samuel Hasty agreed.

They sat down and from somewhere in his pockets Clyde brought out
a coin. Drear shouted and Jennet came in, her hands white with floor.

“Rye,” her father said without looking up.

“How can I git it in the middle of the bread?” she demanded.

“i’ll get it for you,” Jonathan said and rose.

“All right, then,” she said.

He went after her and saw that her red hair, which he had never seen
otherwise than tumbled upon her head, was brushed and braided in a long
braid down her back to her knees.

“What wonderful long hair you have,” he said surprised. He had indeed
never seen such long gleaming stuff. “It looks fine.”

“I had time today to clean myself,” she said shortly, but her face was
not angry. She thrust out her chin at a low door. “In there,” she said,
“rye’s in a keg. You can dip it out into a jug that stands on top.”

She went back to her bread, and he went to the iean4o and dipped op
the whisky. It smelled so strong it was fire in his nostrils, but when he
took it to the tables, the men drank it like tea.

“Taste it,” Clyde ordered him.

He poured out a glass, and Jonathan put it to his lips and felt his mouth
go raw. He swallowed hastily, and his stomach curled. His eyes were full
of tears, and he longed to rush for water, but they were laughing at Mm.

“What’s the matter, boy?” his father roared.

“You’ll have to learn to take rye down,” Drear said, “else whafl! you
do when you get fever and snakebites?”

Samuel Hasty said nothing, but he laughed a silent mean laughter that

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

was EatefoL But Lew Merridy got up and fetched a dipperful of water and
handed it to lonath^an.

“Drink it,” he said, “and don’t mind laughin’. Folks have to laugh at
somethin’ or other here.”

Jonathan drank the water and cooled himself.

“Now take another,” Clyde ordered him.

But Jonathan stood up. “No, I won’t, thanks, Father,” he said, and with-
out waiting walked away into the other room to find his mother.

She was sitting by the bed where Arthur lay, and she was mending a
tom garment. She looked up when he came in.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“Fair,” he said. “Tomorrow we’l! begin the walls.” He frowned. “Did
Jamie come back?” he asked.

“He did, and I let him go out with a man shooting hares,” she said.
“Jack rabbits, they call ’em here,” she added.

“He gave me the slip,” Jonathan said.

Mary smiled. “He’s only a child,” she replied.

“He’s twelve,” Jonathan said doggedly, “and at twelve I knew better.”

“Oh, don’t be so preaching,” Mary said suddenly.

He was very tired, and he felt hurt to the core of his being. This was
the one thing in her that he could never understand, that in the midst of
his doing all for her, she could defend Jamie or his father for the very lack
of what he was for her. It made him feel forever unsure of her and insecure
in his being. He was angry now, but the fear made him mild. He was
silent for a minute, then he searched for something to say to please her
and found it.

“I’ll tell you something pretty, Mother,” he said. “It was dark and we
set the house by the North Star.”

She looked up, her face quickened and lightened with perception of
poetry. “Oh, very pretty, Jonathan I” she cried warmly, and in her pleasure
drew him near again.

By dawn they were working. Now the house was begun. The foundation
was dug, not deep, for earth would join to earth by rain and snow. Into
the foundation the first sod bricks were laid and others laid upon them
three deep, except where the door was to face the south.

“Now put the cracks MI of earth, and then two more layers of sod,”
Henry Drear ordered them. They all worked fast and hard today, and
there was very little talk. Stephen Parry stood at one comer and another,
keeping them true, and shifting a sod if it did not perfectly break a joint.

“Three layers and then crosswise,” Drear said sharply to Clyde, about
to lay a fourth the wrong way. “Allow the window when you put up two
more,” he said.

Jonathan spoke. “There’s to be four windows, please.”

Every man stopped, astounded.

THE TOWNSMAN

‘'Four windows!’' Drear repeated, stupefied. “Why, boy, four windows
will gather in the wind until the roofll blow away.”

Jonathan felt his face bum with shy blood. “My mother likes sun and
light,” he said stubbornly.

They looked at Clyde, and he spat on his hands. “It’s folly,” he declared.
“I say build it as is best and let her lump it.”

“She shan’t, Father,” Jonathan declared,. “A sod house is bad enough,
but ifil be a cave if there’s not but one single solitary window.”

“Why, a sod house is nothing wrong,” Merridy said. “Coo! in summer
and warm in winter! I was born and raised in a sod house, and if you
prop up the roof so it don’t fail in with water and snow, it’s a good house.
But Drear’s right about wind. Two windows is plenty— one to a room,”

They made two windows and, building until night, had the house ready
for its roof. Jonathan lingered by it after his father and the men were
gone. The place looked solitary and without hope in the evening light It
would be hard to say whether it was new and had sheltered no one yet, or
whether it was roofless from desertion. He walked about it sadly. It would
have wooden window frames tomorrow, and there would be rafters to hold
up the weight of the sod roof. Stephen Parry was to make the woodwork,
and Samuel Hasty had lent the lumber, to be paid for half in cash when
his father had it and half in labor at the busiest time at the mill. “And as
soon as I have a penny of my own,” Jonathan planned, “I’ll put in a
wooden floor.”

The stone cottage in Dentwater had seemed poor enough when they
were in it and knew themselves the poorest people in the village. But it
was a rich man’s house to this earthen heap, and yet here they would be
as well oS as most of Median, where only the inn, the store, and the mill
were even of wood. But he was not yet an American. It gave him no cheer
that most of them were like himself. Instead he felt it a doleful thing to
think that this was true. It shut a door to somewhere better.

He went tramping back to the inn full of this dole. The ground was
solid enough under his feet now, baked by the sun. Fie walked down the
road which was Median’s only street to where it ran around the empty
barren square which was the center of whatever Median was.

If Tmust stay here, he thought, I’ll put trees there, too.

The question of whether he must stay became his inner being, but he
never revealed it. Stay he must now because there was no way to go. There

66.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

was no money to return, to England, and of what use would it be to set
out across the endless prairies? Median must be Ms life, V

.Somewhere in Ms mother he comprehended, by that delicate inexplicable
communication wMch he had with her, that her own inner being was in
despair as wild as his own. But if it was, she said not a word of it She
set herself to the house as soon as the roof was on and . before glass was in
the windows. Glass they would have as soon as Lew Merridy could get it
fetched, but half of Median had no glass. Their windows were curtained
with buffalo skins or old blankets.

*Teave the grass on the floor until we get wood,” she told Clyde, ‘'Itll
be cleaner than mud.”

Wood and glass she would have, and if she had to live in a sod house
she would show everybody how to do it. The children would be brought
up properly, too, and with their manners, and not rough the way Clyde
had got to be. Jonathan’Ii help me, she thought.

Thus she made in a very few days a sort of home out of the earth. Mrs.
Drear gave her an old bed from the inn, and one by one women she had
not seen came over the quarter of a mile of grass and brought her a pot,
a plate of food, a mended blanket, a wooden stool. From Merridy ’s Gen-
eral Store she had six wooden boxes. The store was the one place in
Median where for an hour she could forget the limitless plains and sky
which frightened her whenever she looked at them. She was amazed at
the store. Even in Dentwater there was not a better collection of goods—
all thrown together, it was true.

‘Tf I could put my hands to it,” she told Jonathan, “I could make a
place you could find something. People drive for miles, Merridy says, to
buy of him, and wagons stop for food and clothing and blankets, and
everybody has to wait tOl he sorts out what they want.”

“There’s an idea, Mother,” Jonathan said. “Fll hire myself to him if
he’ll have me.”

You can t,” Clyde said. “You’re promised to Drear to pay the rent of
land and Ms horses to plow up a garden.”

“I thought you were to work out for Drear,” his wife retorted.

Me?” Clyde cried. “When the cMcken coop’s done I’m workin’ now,
and it won’t be but a matter of five days or six for that, I s’all go and home-
stead somewheres. Land we must get while it’s free and before all the
greedy ones has got it. It’s late now. Ten years earlier would have been
better, and by now I might ha’ been a rich landowner with my cattle and
my horses. I s’all— ” ■

“Oh, you!” Mary cried bitterly. “Shut up, do, Clyde!”

He went off in one of his sudden huffs, and Mary sewed hard for a
moment on a curtain she was making out of a flour bag. Mrs. Drear had
given her a heap, washed and bleached and ready to use.

“Go to see Mr. Merridy tomorrow, son,” she told Jonathan. He was
puttmg up a shelf above the deep sod fireplace. A tickli.sh job it was, too,

THE TOWNSMAN

for he had to drive two short, stout blocks of wood into the thick sod wali
to hold it. But he was learning how to hold and use tools he had not needed
in England; and Stephen Parry, whose home was a dugout on the side of
the river bank below Median, had lent him a hammer 'and a saw and
given him some nails. Thus he had nailed together boxes to make a
closet for their clothes and upon boxes had nailed, three boards for a
table, and with a broken scythe from Drear’s barn he had smoothed the
inner walls of the house.

Labor was all he had to exchange for all else they needed, and he,
worked until he fell upon his straw mattress at night. Mindful of his seed
for a place of his own, his mother had hung a blanket across a comer
and put his mattress upon boards behind it, and above it he had driven in
wooden blocks for a shelf for his books and some pegs to hold his clothes.
It was almost as dark by day as it was by night, unless he lit a candle.
Sometimes he remembered that he used to see from his window the Irish
Sea and the sails of ships white in the sunshine.

But on that next day there was no doubt that he must hire himself
wherever he could for best pay. It was halfway between morning and noon
when Mary, hanging the curtains she had made, saw out of the window a
wagon coming near. It was Henry Drear’s wagon. She knew its red body,
and in a moment she would see the yellow letters painted on its side,
“American House.” When it came near enough for that, she saw some-
thing else. It was Clyde, propped up on the seat and looking as if he were
dead.

“Whatever now!” she muttered and put down her curtain and went
hurrying out.

There he was, fainted sure enough, but not dead. Henry Drear was hold-
ing him up, and the horses stopped before the house.

“He’s cut his leg,” Henry Drear said impatiently. “A more orkward feller
never was born, I told my wife yestiddy, watchin’ him handle the ax.”

“'He’s never chopped his own leg!” she cried, and knew he had, for
his thick woolen trouser leg was soaked with blood, and blood was trickling
out of his boot.

“Nigh off, I reckon,” Drear said. “Is Jonathan about?”

“No, he’s gone over to Merridy’s this morning,” Mary said; “and Jamie,
of course, is never where he’s wanted. RuthI” she called.

Ruth came out. “What, Mother?” She clapped her hands to her mouth.
“Dad!” she cried and stood still.

“Come here and help me, silly,” Mary said. “Now, Mr. Drear, well
hold him if you’ll let him down.”

Together she and Ruth took Clyde’s dead weight until Drear could step
down. Then he hoisted Clyde across his great shoulders.

“Fll carry him in,” he said, “and I’d advise you to find Stephen Parry’s
wife. Some say she’s a witch, but there’s times you want a witch. Anyway,
she sewed a man’s head on again, they say, after he’d been to the gallows.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■ Clyde’s blood was spurtiag,' soaking into the drying, grass on, the floor,
soaking into the straw of the mattress, where , Arthur lay, his blue eyes
eiionn.oiis. He had .not said a word.

■: ''Oh, that Jamie!” Mary cried in' misery. "He’s not here to send.”

: go for her myself,” Drear said gravely. "Damn the man' for a

cussed baby, with an ax, but he don’t look good. Tie his leg tight under
the knee, Mrs. Goodlifle.”

"Yes,, .yes,” Mary moaned and tore off her a.pron and wrenched off the
strings. "Help me, Ruth.”

Henry Drear strode away, and Mary in terror wrapped the strings about
Clyde’s leg and cried to Ruth to hold the knot. Upon the threshold Maggie,
wandering unheeded, saw a pool of bright red. She stooped carefully, being
fat and unsteady, and dipped her finger in it, stared at her red finger, and
then tasted it It was not good, and she made a sickish face. But the
color was irresistible, and now she dabbled in it.

Arthur called out faintly, "Mother, Maggie’s playin’ in father’s blood!”

"For shame, Maggie!” Mary screamed and flew to Maggie. "Wicked—
wicked-wicked!” She shook the child with every word. "A wicked, unfeel-
ing, naughty thing!” she cried and burst into angry sobs. Oh, Clyde would
cut himself and maybe die and leave them helpless in the wilderness!

She sat down and for the first time since she had left England she cried
aloud, and the children, seeing her, began to cry, too, Maggie loudly, Ruth
in soft sobs, and Arthur in a sort of silent misery. But she paid no heed
to them and cried on and on helplessly because, having once begun, she
could not stop.

"Well, what’s all dis to-do?” a soft voice said at the door. They looked
up. Ruth stopped crying. It was the witch woman! Maggie, sitting on the
floor, looked at her, astonished; but Mary saw only another woman,

"Oh, come in, if you please,” she said, catching her breath. She was
suddenly ashamed of herself for crying like a great baby. "My husband’s
cut his leg sorely, and Mr, Drear tells me you can mend anything.”

"I can mend some things,” Stephen Parry’s wife said. She stepped in and
around Maggie, smiled at her, and went to the bed and began unlacing
Clyde’s boot

"Is the little feller sick, too?” she asked.

"I can’t get him up,” Mary said. "I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”

The big brown woman did not answer. But Artie felt her glance upon
him, warm, piercing him kindly so that he was not afraid. He stopped
crying and lay still, waiting.

Steadily, quietly drawing off Clyde’s boot and his woolen sock, she un-
covered his wound. He had gashed himself to the bone, and the great lips
of flesh hung quivering and raw. She shook her head,

"It’ll be many a day befo’ dis man walks,” she said, "and it may be he’ll
never walk straight again, at dat.”

She laid his leg down and took the kettle from the fire and, opening

THE TOWNSMAN

a small' package of brown paper, shook something into the tin bask which
stood on a box, and poured water over it. Then, opening a closed cotton
ball she had in her bundle, she took out the raw cotton, and dipped it in
the brew and washed the wound*. Clyde muttered and groaned. -

''Dang/’ he began, , opened hiS' eyes, and famted again.

"Fd just as soon he didn’t come to,” the woman said. She took a needle
and thread from a spool in, her bundle and dipped them in the water; , and
then, as though she were sewing a rent m cloth, she d,rew together the lips
of Ms wound.

They watched her silently, and then Ruth cried, 'Ts this how you sewed
the man’s head on, too?”

,The woman smiled. "Honey, I didn’t sew' anybody’s head o,n,. They wa,s
a po’ niggah down South once got slashed in the neck by some mad wkite
folks, and he got away and hid in a sw^amp, and I fixed him up so he w'as
whole agam. Dat was befo’ de wall.”

"Oh,” Ruth whispered. Her eyes were bright with questions, but she did
not ask them. And when her sewing was done, the woman took some clean
white strips out of her bundle and bound Clyde’s leg carefully and tightly.

"Don’ let him stir ’at leg,” she told Mary, "He’s just got to lie there.

If he gets a fever, Fii come again. If he don’t get a fever, he’s ail right.”

She tied up her bundle as she spoke and was ready to go.

"I do thank you, Mrs. Parry,” Mary said, "and when I can, I will repay
you.”

"Nothin’ to pay,” the big woman said. “Nobody pays me for this kind
of he’p. And nobody calls me Mrs. Parry. I’m just Sue,” She gave them
fi. her slow, deep, peaceful smile and went away.

Jonathan walked across Median from Merridy’s store and down the path
toward the house. Some day this’ll be a street, he thought. He felt in better
spirits than he had smce he left Dentwater. This morning, his shyness hidden
under Ms usual sturdy stolidity, he had gone to Mr. Merridy and olfered
himself as a clerk. He came at a good moment for himself. Mr. Merridy
was distracted by Ms wife’s absence and by the prospect that for months to
come the twins would take her time away from the store.

"I certainly do need somebody real bad,” he said mournfully, looking
about the disordered dusty room. It was being further disordered by
farmers and their wives who had come m for Saturday buying and, Impa-
tient of being waited upon, were turning over garments and taking down
goods from the shelves.

"Hi there, how much is them. Lew?” one after another shouted.

"Comm’l” he roared back and went on talking to Jonathan. "Even Katie
—that’s my oldest, and only thirteen— she’s tied hand and foot to the babies
till my wife gets around again. I tell you, you wouldn’t realize the difference
between twins and a solitary child. You ain’t ready for it— it’s a shock.”

^ "Yes, sir,” Jonathan said.

"70

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

A tiliB, dark-haired little giri in a dress of faded red-and-green cotton
plaid came to the inner door and said primly, "Papa, Mamma wants
. : "AM right, Katie,” Mr, Merridy said. He turned back to Jonathan.
‘'There, that's the way it is. Km yon begin now?”

"Yes, sir,” Jonathan said.

The little girl at the door waited. "Papa, are you coming?” she called.
But she was looking at Jonathan from quiet, shrewd hazel eyes. She was not
at al pretty, he thought, and forgot her.

"What can I do for yon, sir?” he began at once to a stooped old man
who stood without moving beside a barrel of crackers.

"Two pounds of them,” he said, "and a side of salt pork and some beans
and black molasses.”

Between customers he tried to tidy the counters and sort the tumbled
dry goods. It was noon before he knew it.

"YouTe welcome to a bite here,” Merridy said.

"Fli Just go back and tell my mother about the job, thanks,” he replied,
"fll be back in an hour.”

So he had struck over the path to the sod house which he could not yet
call home. And yet, as he drew near, he imagined that he could see the
touch of his mother even upon that rough earthen mass. Stephen Parry
had put in the glass as soon as it came, and it shone in the two windows,
and there was an edge of white curtain. From behind the house he caught
the flutter of garments hanging on the line, and was surprised because his
mother did not usuaMy wash on Saturday. But he could not see what the
garments were. She would never hang her wash near the road. "Family
wash tells everything,” she always said. "How many you have, how poor
you are, and if you’re good at your mending or not. ! don’t want strangers
knowing all about us.”

When he walked into the house she was on her hands and knees, chipping
at the sod on the ground.

"Why, Mother!” he cried.

"Your father’s bled all over,” she said. "He’s cut himself terrible, and
there’s nothing for it but to get rid of this grass.”

"However did he cut himself?” Jonathan asked, stupefied,

"With the ax, chopping at Drear’s, of course,” his mother replied shortly.
She kept on hacking at the sod.

"Don’t, Mother,” Jonathan said. He took the stump of a scythe away
from her and down on his knees hacked out the stains of his father’s blood.

On the bed he saw his father lying, but he did not speak to him at once.
His father would cut himself and be past work, he thought bitterly. That
was all he needed to do now when his work was all he had to give them.

"Well, Jonathan,” Clyde said feebly, "there you be.”

"Hello, Father,” Jonathan said.

"i’m hurt terrible,” Clyde said.

"Sorry for that, Father,” Jonathan replied. He was ashamed of his cold-

THE TOWNSMAN

7.1

ness and, went over to Ms father's side and stood looking down on him.

'' Twas the ax,’’ his father groaned He looked sunken-eyed and white
from loss of blood. long-handled, unhandy thing, flingin* itself every-
way in your hands, I had just drove in a, post for the corner, and the dang
thing turned on me Hke^ a beast bitin’, and first thing I know I was spoutin"
blood. I couldn’t no more’n get to Drear’s door and stand there roarin’,
when I dropped.”

^■Too bad, Father,” Jonathan said. He must not' show disgust, for this
was his father. But silence for once was hard. He leaned over and gathered
Arthur's little body and lifted him.

*^Come and sit on my knee- a bit, Artie,” he said. '^Your wee booes' must
be tired layin’.”

'Tying,” Mary said abruptly from the stove.

“It don't matter here, I think, Mother,” Jonathan said. “There’s nobody
to know the difference between right and wrong ways of taikink”

“All the more reason to be right,” she said sharply. Then she softened.
“Jamie's getting clever at catching hares,” she said. “Until I get fowl If s
a help, too.”

“Where is he?” Jonathan asked.

“He can't stay away from the wagons going West,” she said. “Likely he’s
up there by the road, watcMn’ ’em. That's one thing about Median— he
can't come to much evil.”

Clyde interrupted them. “Jonathan, I reckon you’ll have to finish the
coop for me.”

Jonathan cuddled Arthur in his arms. “I can’t, Father, unless on Sun-
days. I have a job at Merridy’s.”

“No, Jonathan, never I” Mary turned a bright face toward him.

‘'Yes, steady, Mother. Wage we haven’t talked yet, but I shall stick up
for whafs right and then do my best”

“Oh, good son, Jonathan!” his mother cried softly, and to his astonish-
ment she came to him and kissed the top of Ms head as he sat. Then, be-
cause she was embarrassed, she bent and kissed Arthur and said, “Now’,
my own, you shall have something to make you better. Jonathan will bring
it you.”

And Maggie, seeing all this as she played on the sod, bawled out, “Kiss-
kiss!”

“Oh, you,” Mary said, laughing. “You must always have everything,
tool” She lifted the heavy child and kissed her on the cheeks and set her
down again and turned back to Jonathan. “Oh, Jonathan, it’s a terrible
helplessness for a woman to know nothing’s to come in at the end of the
week.”

He could scarcely bear in these days his mother’s dashes of bravery and
her moments of trembling. This was trembling, and something trembled in
him, too. He said quickly, “We can take it in goods or cash as we need.”
And then, softened because he could do something for her, he said to his

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

fatliery aever made a fowl coop in my life, but Fll, try,, come ' Sunday,
Dad; and this afternoon Fll tell Mr. Drear so. And now, Artie boy, I must
eat and get hack to work.”' He laid Arthur down tenderly beside Ms father
and .went to the table and sat down on a box that served for a chair.

Work was a good word to have upon .the tongue, and he savored it with
Ms food as he ate.

The store stood opposite the hotel and across the empty square. It was a
frame building, made of planks nailed on a wooden skeleton and then
covered outside with unpainted shingles and on the inside with thin lath
and plaster, whitewashed. To Jonathan the shape of the building was like
the dragon he had once seen in a picture of St. George and the Dragon
at the vicarage in Dentwater. It had been a dragon with a great scaly ruff
that stood up around the head but its body had been small. From the front
the dragon had looked a terror, but behind it was nothing. He thought of
this often with dry, secret amusement as he approached the store from the
side each day. A great false front the store had, a high structure of painted
boards, single thick, and across it painted in big letters “Merridy’s General
Store,” and under that, in letters almost as big, “Median.” From the front,
with the two show windows for eyes and the door, always open, for a
mouth, the store looked something stupendous. But behind this painted front
was the boxlike building, an oblong for the store, cut off in the back to make
three rooms for Lew Merridy*s family. At almost any moment in the day
customers could hear coming from those rooms a thin wailing duet It
prompted the kind to ask, “How’s the twins, Lew?”

“Fine,” he said. “Savin’ their always wantin’ more nourishment than
their mother can give. What they need is a nanny goat ”

From these rooms Katie came and went, a sharp, efficient child, quick
to notice if Jonathan put a thing down where he had not taken it up. And
yet he got on with her well enough in a curious meager way, with little
speech and some dry joking. She was quick to see what he meant to do and
to help him when she saw. The windows were his bane. Lew Merridy used
them for dumps and leftovers, and this was an offense to Jonathan. He
began on his fourth morning to carry out a plan he had been making in his
mind from the first moment. It was midweek, and not many farmers came
in, nor women; and he drew back the soiled gray half-curtains that sepa-
rated the windows from the shop.

“What you at, Jonathan?” Mr. Merridy inquired. He sat on a keg of
whisky reading a two-weeks-old newspaper that had reached him this morn-
ing by mail.

“Shall you mind, sir, if I clean a bit?” Jonathan answered.

“Naw,” Merridy answered, his eyes on the paper, “though you’ll find,
Jonathan, it ain’t no use to put time and stren’th in it. Kansas blows right
ihoo anything.”

He forgot Jonathan and read the fine print, frowning. “Nigger population

THE TOWNSMAN

in Kansas is goin* up ' sometMn® terribie/’ he said. this taik of 'forty
acres and a mule’ is doin’ it Exodusters, they’re called.”

Jonathan, Ms head wreathed in dust, thought of Stephen Parry , and his
wife. I could do with more of tliem, he thought, and was about to say so
when he sneezed violently, and when he came to himself Merridy had
gone on. He began sorting everything into piles as neatly as he couid—
tobacco, lamp wicks, chipped d,ishes, candies, old copper, Mittons, nails of
all sizes, yards of sheeting yellowed with rain from a leak, a .heap of small
mothy' skins of rabbits and moles and badger brought in for barter. He
wMstled under Ms breath as he worked to keep himself from speaking out
what be thought All this refuse!

“They’s a feller named Buffalo Bill,” Mr. Merridy announced, “he’s' hired
to shoot buffalo meat for the railroad out West, and he’s killed four thou-
sand and more buffaio—a regular David and Goliath!”

Jonathan looked up. “Shall we get a railroad in Median, Mr. Merridy?”

“Shore wish we would,” Merridy replied. “I would git my stock in easy,
and the town would boom. Why, some towns around hyere when the rail-
road skips ’em just pick up and move the whole shebang to where the
railroad is, they’re so anxious not to miss it— put the town on wheels and
go-”

“Well, I never!” Jonathan said simply. He was sweeping the window
floor, and now Mr. Merridy himself sneezed and looked stern.

“I swear it ain’t healthy to stir up all that old dirt,” he said.

“I’ll sprinkle it,” Jonathan said. He took up a pail and went to the pump
outside. Katie was there pumping, her thin arms flailing up and down.

“Here, I’ll do it,” he said good-naturedly and pumped her pail full first.
“Wouldn’t have a bit of rag to scrub with, would you?” he asked.

“Scrub what?” she demanded.

“Windows,” he replied.

“Ma was goin’ to clean them windows,” she said, “if she hadn’t had
twins.”.

“Those windows,” Jonathan said gently. But she did not understand, and
he laughed and went back. A queer sharp female thing, he thought, brown
like a scrawny hen. But a moment later she came, a rag in her hand,

“It’s hard to find a rag since the twins came,” she said, “We’ve used
everything up for diapers.”

She stood, watching wMle he sprinkled the dusty boards and swept. Then
she dipped the rag into the water. “Fll scrub it up,” she said.

He watched her, amused by her body moving in little quick hops as she
worked. Like a grasshopper, he thought

“They’s some talk here of Median bein’ a county seat,” Mr. Merridy said.
“Well, why not? We got a river that don’t go dry, and we’re at a crossroads.
We’re bound to grow— growin’ all the time. Why, we’ve trebled In the last
two years! Drear was the first, then I built my store, and look at the way
folks are beginnin’ to pile up!”

74 :

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

loEathan doosed the windowpanes.

. woEida't bother about them panes, Mr, Merridy said. ‘‘The first littie
shower will dirty ’em again.’- . '

‘Til rub them again, then/-’ ' Jonathan answered peaceably,

“KatieT’ Mrs; Merridy’s voice rose above an outburst of dual wailing.
Katie got up from her knees. ‘Til have to go,” she said quickly.

“Yes, sir,” Mr. Merridy mused, “Median’s goin’ to be a great big town.”

Median was the small heart of a vast body. There were days when the
heart scarcely beat, and then Median seemed to Jonathan as remote from
ail the other parts of the earth as though it were alone upon a star. On such
days few customers came in. Jennet ran in from the inn to buy saleratus,
or Mrs. Drear came in for dried apples to make a pie, and perhaps through
the day a stragglmg one or two of the other women came in for spool
thread or a package of needles or a pound of coffee. His mother could not
leave the sod house so long as his father could hobble no farther than the
door. His leg healed, but in a wealed scar so that, as long as Clyde lived,
he would limp.

Jonathan welcomed all except Jennet, but her he disliked, or thought
he disliked. But it was only when she was there that he disliked her. When
she stood by the counter, her face, soft and bold together, somehow shocked
him. She was not bad-looking, but he hated the green glass color of her
eyes, and he distrusted the way in which she spoke to him, as though she
had known him all her life when they had only talked a few times.

“Hello, Jonathan, boy!” she always said carelessly.

“How do you do, Miss Jennet,” he always replied in his best clerkly
manner. “What can I do for you today?”

“Well, say, you can stop talking like that,” she said.

He waited stiffly. He would talk as he pleased.

“Oh, heck, what do I care how you talk?” she cried discontentedly.
“Give me a yard and a half of red ribbon.”

“Not for yourself, I hope,” he said.

“Why not for myself?” she demanded.

“Not with that red hair,” he said, without knowing why, for it was none
of his business.

“It’s my red hair,” she retorted.

“There’s enough of it without red ribbons,” he said.

THE TOWNSMAN 75

: She snatched the ribbon from Ms- hand and tied it about her hair and
made a bow over her ear* ''There,” she said.

He would not say it was handsome, but it was, though everybody knows
a red-haired woman should never wear red.

"Anything else?” he asked coolly.

"Red calico,” she said, "for a red dress. That! Eight yards.”

He measured off eight yards of striped red-and-white calico, folded it,
and in intense silence handed it to her. Lucky she had queer pale skin and
did not freckle as most redheads did! But he would not tell her so.

“I’ll come and show you the dress when Fve made it,” she said insolently.

He did not reply. He disliked her presence, and yet when she was gone
he could not forget her. She was one of those girls whose every movement
one remembered. She made him think of Constance, who had taught him
to dance. But Constance was fiuttery, as though she knew all the time that
perhaps she was not quite nice. Jennet would not even know what niceness
was. He looked thoughtfully out of the windows he kept so clean, and his
eyes wandered on and on over the prairies, and he put Jennet out of his
mind. The skies changed but the prairies never, except when they borrowed
light and shadow from the sky. One would say not a soul lived upon that
flat, endless plain.

Yet the more he looked at the prairie, the more he perceived that it
was not flat at all. It rose, smooth and even, on a long, slow, steady pull
westward. Walking over it day by day, he felt the earth was flat under
his feet; but if he could have made steps a mile long, he would have felt
the earth swirl upward. Sometimes, if the sky was cloudless at the horizon,
especially at the moment of clearest twilight between sunset and night, he
saw the slant of the earth against the sky, and then Median was in the
middle of it That long, level, rising plain was Median’s body, and the
people who came out of it were lifeblood flowing through Median. There
were two kinds of people: those who came only once on their way to the
West, and those who stayed and came again and again; and Lew Merridy
and Jonathan were never agreed as to who should be served first if they
came together* ■ . : _ ■

For there were days when the store was full of clamoring, impatient
people, anxious to get their wagons stocked and on the trail again, and
others as anxious to get food and salt and goods to take to their homes.
There was rivalry and sometimes even dislike between the two kinds of
people. Those who were going on were sure that all who did not go with
them were stolid fools, losing all for the sake of supposed prudence; and
those who stayed and built sod houses and cleared land for farms and grew
cattle and pigs and fowl and sowed crops and planted fruit trees scorned
the great windy dreams of those who were going West.

"Hey, Jonathan!” Mr. Merridy roared, "git them folks waited on!
They’re goin’ to Nebrasky and got to git started!”

“Just a minute,” Jonathan called back, and went on filling the careful

, 76 ,

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH,

order' of a farmer who lived ten miles across the long grass. “Two pounds
of brown sugar— yes, sir— a small keg of black molasses, and a pound' of
bacon, and some nails— yes, sir—” This man would come again and again
with 'the same needs. “Nice. day,”' Jonathan said as he added the igures,

“A mite windy,” the farmer replied. His eyebrows' and hair were Ml
of dust, and dust lay in the wrinkles of his face, ‘^You don’t get the wind
■ here in town the way we do. Reckon Fll take a stick , of that there pepper-
naint for my little fellow. He’s laid up today with a stone bruise and couldn’t
come.” '

Jonathan put in two sticks.

“Thanks,” the farmer said. A look passed between the two, and Jonathan
smiled. This was the sort of man he liked, a steady chap, working his bit
of the prairie. He wrapped the order carefully and cut the string extra long.
String was handy in a house. Then he went over to a huge hairy man with
a big hat who was waiting for him and pulling at his beard furiously.

“Damned if I wasn’t about ready to pull out of here,” the man shouted.
“I would have if the next store wasn’t three days away. Now you just
hustle yourself, young feller, and get me corn meal— a sack of it— and a
side of bacon and plenty of beans, dried apples, a keg of black molasses,
and sugar and salt and coffee— a kettle, for we busted ours last night—”

Jonathan put things together in silence. This man would go on and never
be seen again. At the end of the day in the quiet of closing Mr. Menidy
would say gravely, “It’s like this, Jonathan. The steadies will come again
and again. You can let ’em wait. But you got to wait on the others quick
and git what you can out of ’em.”

“But the store is built on the steadies, Mr. Merridy,” Jonathan said. “I
should think it’s them you ought to consider first”

“Well, not necessarily,” Mr. Merridy said, “not at all necessarily so,
Jonathan. Their money ain’t so sure, when you let ’em run bills the way
I have to do, and then again I git run over with the stuff they bring in
instead of cash. But the others have got to pay cash, ’cause we won’t see
’em again and can say so.”

“In the long run—” Jonathan began.

“You don’t need to think about the long run in a country like this,”
Mr. Merridy interrupted. “All you need to take care of is right here and
now.”

“I don’t agree with you, Mr. Merridy,” Jonathan replied.

Mr. Merridy stared at him over his pipe. “Well, don’t then!” he said.
“But you’re kind of young to say so like that.”

“Yes, sir,” Jonathan said respectfully. But walking home across that
long slant of land under Median, he thought stubbornly, Fm right, and
Merridy’s wrong, for all that. It’s the steadies that come first, anywhere.

“Jonathan’s got to go in my place.”

Behind his blanket curtain he heard bis father say this sullenly in the

THE TOWNSMAN

night. He . had taught his ears to be duil once he slipped into Ms ow.o
comer of the sod house, but now they picked these words out of the
darkness, and he heard them. He had been aware of a low conversation
between Ms parents, just as in the evening when he^ came home earlier
than usual he had been aware of controversy in the atmosphere. But his
young manhood demanded some sort of privacy; and, since there was
none except what he and his mother made, he ignored Ms father’s restless-
ness' and busied himself about an improvement.

“I don’t need to sleep on the floor any more, Mother,” he said cheer-
fully. “Somebody told me something today, quite accidental4ike. Seems
folk make bedsteads just with slats driven into the walls and a post. Fm
going to the river to cut cottonwood.”

“Well, I never,” Mary said without attention. Clyde must not say before
Jonathan what he had been thinking and talking all day.

Jonathan took Ms father’s ax and put it over Ms shoulder. Jamie, at home
because he was hungry, started after Mm.

“Reckon I’ll come and see if there’s mushrats,” he said.

“Muskrats it is, Jamie,” Jonathan said kindly.

“Mushrats they call it here, though,” Jamie retorted.

“You don’t want to get talking like them, though,” Jonathan said. “Most
of them never had the chance for school.”

It had not occurred to him for a long time to think about school. There
had been no time since they had come to Median when anything could
be thought of except shelter and food and the store.

“I don’t need school here,” Jamie said. “There’s no books to read. And
if I go with you, like Dad says I’m to, I’ll never need school.”

“Whafs Dad say?” Jonathan asked quickly.

“Him and Mother,” Jamie replied. “They’ve been jawin’ all day, every
time I came in they were at it Dad says you’re to homestead for him over
in the West He says he can’t make it this spring if he don’t start, and he
can’t start with Ms sore leg, and so you’re to go and me with you.”

Plains and sky lengthened before Jonathan’s eyes. “And who’ll feed
them while Fm gone?” he inquired bitterly. “That’s like Father, saying
what I’m to do and giving no thought to Mother and the little ones,”

“He says he’ll tend ’em,” Jamie replied.

“And what did Mother say?” Jonathan asked.

“She says if you go, she goes,” Jamie replied. He had been a step be-
hind Ms brother, but he ran and caught up with him and cried, “And oh,
Jon, don’t say you won’t go! Let’s go! I hate this little bit of a place. Every-
body says it’s better out West.”

Jonathan looked down into Jamie’s pleading face. It looked suddenly
strange to him, vivid and handsome as Jamie would look when he was a
young man.

“You’ve got freckles,” he said. “You didn’t have them in England.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“There’s more sun here than in Engiand, that’s why/' Jamie said. “It
idn’t fog and rain all the time.”

“Rained mud when we came,” Jonathan said shortly.

“I know, but when it rains it rains, and then it’s done with rain, and
the sun comes out hot It in’t ' betwixt rain and sun all the time like it was
In. Dentwater.”

“You like it here?” Jonathan asked.

“Lots more than England,” Jamie replied. “Do you?”

“No,” Jonathan said.

They were at the river now. It flowed before them almost as straight
as a ditch because there were no rocks to turn the current, and the dark
soil was smooth and free from obstruction, and the cottonwoods grew in
dumps near the muddy water. They slid down the side of the gufly, and
Jonathan began his search for a tree,

“You’ll go, won’t you, Jonathan?” Jamie clamored.

“It’ll take thinkin’ of,” Jonathan replied sternly. But it did not. He would
not go. He would not leave his mother and the children to his father. He
would not leave the small certainty of his job. He wanted to build another
room to the house. And what was the use of pulling up their new roots
they had scarcely put down to go to another place? “Lucky there’s the
Pacific Ocean to stop folks,” he said sarcastically, “else they’d be goin’
round and round the globe like cats chasin’ their own tails.”

Jamie looked up from a hole he was prodding with a stick. “There’s
gold out West,” he said.

“If you like digging,” Jonathan retorted. He began to chop at a small
strong tree until in a few strokes he had it down. Henry Drear had taught
him the Sunday he had finished the fowl coop how to swing an ax clear of
his legs. By the time the coop was finished, the ax felt comfortable in his
hands. Now he stripped the branches off quickly and chopped off two
lengths and a shorter one.

“Tm done,” he said.

“I’ll wait a little,” Jamie said. “The feller’s hidin’ in here.” He lay on
his stomach peering into the hole and did not offer to help Jonathan pull
the poles to the top of the gully, and Jonathan did not ask it.

Jamie’s the only one of us like Dad, he thought, and struggled up alone
and home again.

They were still quarreling. He knew because talk ceased so abruptly
w en he entered the house. But he would notice silence no more than tallr
he had made up his mind by now. If his mother could win without putting
her battle on him against his father, let her. Once he began that quarrel
there would be no end to it.

“Come and help me, Ruth,” he commanded his sister. She was curUno
Maggie’s hair. ®

“Wish I could help you, Jonathan,” Arthur said. He was sitting by the
hre in their only chair, a quilt folded behind him for a pillow.

THE TOWNSMAN

: “So you shail oue of these days,” Jonathan said. He went behind Ms
curtain. “Now then, you see, Ruth, the post goes here, and then I jam one
pole into tMs wall and the long pole the other way and notch ’em into the
post. Now, what you’re to do for me is to sew up those sacks I brought
from the store, and we’ll slip the poles through before I nail ’em firm,
and I’ll have myself a good bed off the floor.”

“Oh, Jonathan, it’s clever!” Ruth cried. “Whoever told you?”

“A chap told me at the store when he came in wantin’ bags,” Jonathan
said.

His mother came to see, and Maggie trotted In and . out while they
worked; and to Jonathan the house seemed for the first time a home. The
outdoor air was warm, but there was a fire in the sod fireplace for cooking
their supper. They were more lucky than most, for Jonathan could bring
home from the store boxes of wood too thin to use for planks, and these
made the green cottonwood bum. There were still some women who used
buffalo chips, but Mary hated the dung in the house. She had scraped the
walls very smooth, and in the deep earthen window sills had set jars of
prairie flowers. Since the flowers had bloomed she had been happier,
though they were flowers strange to her and to everybody, so that most of
them had no names. Jonathan had made two benches and stools, and had
brought home red-and-white checked oilcloth for the table. Now when the
oil lamp was lit the light upon white cotton curtains, the flowers, the fire,
and the smell of combread baking made home.

Jamie came in late with three fish on a string.

“Fli clean ’em if you’ll cook ’em, Ruth,” he said.

And they sat down to their meal of cornbread and fish and a dish of
beans, and dandelions that Ruth had picked and washed.

They ate, but Clyde was silent and Mary talked too much, as though
she were trying to keep him silent. But Jonathan noticed a change in her.
The last week her talk had been all of a garden if she could get the sod
peeled off, and he had promised her now that the coop was done for Mr.
Drear that he would chop out the sod tomorrow, which was his first Sun-
day, and she could scarcely wait. She had gathered seeds from here and
there, but most from Stephen Parry’s wife.

Tonight she said nothing of gardens. It was ail of how glad she was
to get his mattress off the ground and how good he was to think to hear
about such a thing, and how Arthur had eaten well today with no coaxing,
and how Maggie ran away twice and the second time came running back
because there was what she called “a big long thing,”

“A snake, of course,” Mary said swiftly, “and I was in terror. It might
have been a rattler or a copperhead, even. Naughty Maggie!”

“Naughty Maggie,” Maggie repeated with pleasure. “Oh, oh, Maggie!”

Then, in the middle of the night in the unusual softness of Ms bed hung
in sacking instead of spread upon the sod, he heard his father say, “Jona-
than’s got to go in my place,” and knew what it meant.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He got up solemuly aud put on Ms trousers and coat and went out into
the space where the other children slept. His parents slept in the space
beyond, and under the blanket hung in the doorway be saw a light. He
went to it and called softly, ^‘MotherP*

She was not in bed. But he saw when she came to put the curtain aside
that she had been in bed and had got up, perhaps because she was angry,
for she had her shawl wrapped about her. From under it her unbleached
cotton nightgown flowed like a skirt.

“Mother, I couldn’t help hearing,” he said.

“Then come in,” she replied. “You may as well hear everytMng.”

He went in with her. A small oil lamp made out of a tin can and a wick
lit the dark walls in flickers of light and shadow. He sat down on a box.

“I heard what you said, Father,” he repeated. “So I got up to see what
it was all for.”

Clyde sat up in bed. He had not shaved since he cut his leg, and his
black beard shadowed his smooth, eternally youthful face. “Fm glad you
did hear me,” he said. “Your mother’s been ahusMn’ me until Fm fit to
bust. Wants to down me, she does, without your bearin’ the yes and no of
it. It’s this way, Jonathan. Land’s to be had cheap in the West, and ’tidn’t
goin’ to last forever the way folks is goin’. Jamie says fourteen wagons
come through yestiddy. Stands to reason it won’t last, for the land is wun-
nerful. I herded sheep on it last summer for a chap. Grass is short but
full of richness for stock. But I don’t want to herd sheep. The land’s too
good for it. It’s not black gummy stuff like tMs mud under our feet. It’s
sandy light, and wheat’s the thing.”

Mary broke in, her voice dry with scorn. “Seeing how you couldn’t
grow a bit of com in England, I don’t see how calling it wheat over here
will teach you.”

Clyde paid no heed. He was talking to his son now as man to man.
“You can’t do with a tiddlin’ bit of land out there, neither. It ain’t a matter
of a horse and a cow and a couple of pigs and a little bit of this and that
to harvest whenever it likes to grow ready. Out there a man must work
in a big large way, and if he does, then he’s rich.”

Mary groaned, “Oh, I’ve heard everything big and large ever since the
day I first saw you in Blackpool, loungmg on a street corner, talking about
how you’d caught a whale!”

“And you stopped to listen,” Clyde said.

“Yes, and it was the devil I didn’t see hanging on my skirts made me,”
Mary retorted, “for I was in good circumstances teaching school, and my
pay like clockwork every week, and never was again after I married you.”

Clyde laughed. “Wait till I get my section of land, Mary, and a big frame
house built for you in the middle of it!”

“It’ll have to have trees before I like it,” Mary said moodily. “Fm sick
of this naked country.”

“Trees I s’all plant when the foundation’s set,” Clyde said largely.

THE TOWNSMAN

; we’re fools,” Mary cried. ‘^There’s no honse and no land,, and
we’re talking about trees!”

“There’ll be everything if you do as I say, Jonathan,” Clyde said ear-
nestly. “Here’s the plan. You get a seat on a wagon and go out there and
pick a place for us. Sooner the better, for maybe the best is gone a’ready.
The law is you must put up a sign of habitation. WeU, a bit of a sod house
will do it, a shelter-like, and you can get help by tradin’ your own help.
That’s easy. Then when my leg lets me—”

Jonathan sat watching his father’s full red lips moving in his black beard.

Mary cried out, “I won’t have Jonathan going there by himself. ’Tisn’t
fair, Clyde, the way you put your work on him.”

“As if I weren’t givin’ him the better job!” Clyde roared. “Why, here

I be, alayin’ in a place as dull as a ditch, and everythin’ waitin’!”

“Everywhere you are is always a ditch to you,” she said, “and what’s
ahead is always everything. You’ve dragged us out of England here, and
now it s not six months and this is a ditch — though I’m not against saying for
once you’re right.”

The look Jonathan and his mother both knew came over Clyde’s dark
face. If he could have walked he would have walked out of the house. But
he could not.

“Put up or shut up,” he muttered.

And all the time they were quarreling Jonathan was making up his own
mind. He was not deciding an answer so much as allowing his natural
being to gather into a great negation.

“Father,” he said, “I won’t go.”

“Now, Jonathan—” his father began.

“I don’t mean to go,” Jonathan said. “Why, I couldn’t put in words. I
didn’t want to leave England, but I left it. Now I’m here, and I won’t pull
up again.”

“Of all the danged silly talk for a young chap to make, that’s the worst,”
Clyde shouted. “Where’d the world be if folk were like you, Jonathan?
Why, the world wouldn’t ha’ been discovered at all, and we’d all be stayin’
in the same little hole some’ere killin’ each other and fightin’ for the same
bits of bread, and not knowin’ that out beyond was plenty and richness.”

“I’m not sayin’ everybody ought to be like me, Father,” Jonathan said
mildly. “Fm only sayin’ how I am. The way I look at it, there’s two kinds
of folk in the world, just like there’s two kinds of life in a seed. Something
sends one kind up to hunt its food in the light and air, and sends the other
kind down into the earth to make the roots. Well, the root is me.”

He was aware of his mother sitting on the side of the bed listening to
all he said, her braid of yellow hair over her shoulders, her arms wrapped
in her shawl; and he used his figure for her ears, though he spoke to his
father, and his father answered in a snort.

“ ’Tis only sense even in a root to find the best place.”

“Root begius where seed falls,” Jonathan said calmly, “and here I stay.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“And III Stay with you, son,” Mary said.

Clyde flung out his arms and shut Ms eyes and ground his jaws together
in a groan. Then he slid down into the bed and drew the patchwork quilt
about Mm.

“Oh, dang the two of you together!” he muttered.

“AH right, Father,” Jonathan replied, and went back to his bed. To
his mother he said nothing, but there passed between them a deep look,
and it was enough.

The next morning when Jonathan came out his father was sitting at the
table dipping combread into a cup of tea and biting it off. Jamie sat be-
side Mm.

“Well, Father,” Jonathan said and sat down away from him. Ruth moved
quickly and silently across from the stove and set tea before him. He nod-
ded at her. Where's Mother?” he asked.

“She’s a headick, and I told her to stop abed and Fd do,” Ruth said.

“Right,” Jonathan replied. A good girl Ruth was getting to be, he
thought, quiet and good. He must go in and see Ms mother before he left.

“You’re up,” he said to Ms father.

“Have to be,” Clyde said bitterly. “My leg’s no good to me yet, but T
s’all have to do with it and Jamie—eh, Jamie?”

“Yes, Dad,” Jamie said. He eyed Jonathan warily over a slab of corn-
bread spread with molasses.

“Jamie and me is goin’ West,” Clyde said loudly. “I’m goin’ to get over
to Drear’s today and see to it”

This was why his mother had a headache, then! He was about to exclaim
in answer to Ms father and saw that Ms father expected it and so he did
not But would she let him go and take Jamie with him?

“Jamie s’ali help Ms old Dad,” Clyde was saying in heavy self-pity, “Ja-
mie’s the only one in the family that feels like I do. We’ll have a rare good
time together, eh, Jamie? We’ll see lots of sights. There’s buffalo runnin’
out there yet and wild horses, and you can snare quails and wild fowl,
and at night we’H camp around a big fire. There’s Indians, too, nice ones,
not cruel, and they’H bring you maize with the husks off and show you how
to catch fish by tickliM them under their cMns.”

All the time Ms father talked to Jamie, Jonathan felt himself used as a
channel throng which to wound Ms mother. His father was striking at
her. He tried by silence, by eating his food, by calling for Maggie to come
and have a cup of tea, to close the channel, but Clyde kept talking.

“We’il ride over the mountains, and we’ll find us a good place, Jamie
and me together, and we’U build a fine house, and then when yon all come
we’ll be stannin’ at the front door sayin’ we told ’em so, eh, Jamie?”

Jamie was disconcerted, feeling something beyond himself in all this,
“AH right, Father,” he said.

“An’ then we’li see about roots movin’,” Clyde said in a loud voice.

THE TOWNSMAN

Jonathan,. could bear no more. He rose. “Shall yon be goin* today,
Father?*’ he asked coldly, Maggie had his teacup tipped tight agai.ii,st her
facCj. waiting for the molass^ .at the bo-ttom of it. to mn in.to .her' .month,

“As soon as I can find a wagon with a place empty,** Clyde replied.
“Happen today, happen tomorrow. I can’t waste my time no more if Fm,
to get ahead of others.’*

“FI! hear news later, th.en,*’ Jonathan said. And, holding his. slender
shoulders square, he went in to his mother. She was lying curled up,, very
small on the spot where he had seen his father stretched last night

“Are you feeling bad, Mother?** he asked.

“My head’s fearful,** she said faintly and did not open her eyes.

He stood there longing to comfort her, longing to say to her, “Don’t
mind him, Mother. Let him go. You and Fll manage.*’ But his intuition told
him that the balance of her soul at this moment was very delicate, and a
little could change it away from him if he spoke against his father. So he
put away what he longed to say and thought of something else.

“Mother, Fm going to Stephen Parry’s this noon and ask him to lay
the floor down. I can manage it now that Fm working Saturdays too.”

She opened her eyes at this. “That’ll be just fine, Jonathan,*’ she said,
and he saw the pleasure in her eyes.

“Good,” he said and kissed her forehead, and as he stooped she put up
her hand and touched his cheek, and he knew he had kept the balance
of her soul.

Six days later Clyde left Median. The wound in his leg was not healed
yet, but it was closing healthily from the bottom, and he was not as lame
as he was to be later when the muscles made a knot under the scar. Still,
his leg could not bear his weight, and he had a stick in one hand and with
the other he leaned upon Jamie’s shoulder.

Jonathan ran out of the store in midmorning to see the wagons start.
What sort of a farewell there had been between his parents he had not
been there to see, and he was glad of it. It was as well for his mother to
have a few hours before he came in at noon.

“Good-by, Father,” he said sedately.

Clyde did not hear him. He was full of joy, and his black eyes were
snapping with laughter and light. Just now he chanced to look at Jennet,
who came running out of the tavern door, her arms full of loaves of bread.

“Here—I baked ’em last night,” she cried. A tall young man took them
from her, and she did not hear Clyde calling her name. “I wish I was
going,” she said to the young man boldly.

“Come along,” he replied as boldly. He was tali and blond, and he
drawled as he spoke. “Ill take you,” he said.

“But will I take you?” Jennet said, laughing.

“It’s for you to say,” the young man replied. He pulled his belt and

84 ' AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

knotted a red handkerchief around his neck and tilted a big straw hat' he'
wore.

“Ask me again/’ Jennet said. ■

“.When?” he asked.

.'“Oh, in a year or two/’ she said, pretending to be careless. But she did
not move her green eyes from his face.

■“Too long/’ he said. “You’ll be too old. A month from today if a wagon
comes along, hop on it, and ride till you come to a river that crosses the
trail once and doubles on itself in a mile. Somewhere in that mile Fll be
watching for you. What’ll you be wearin’, so I can see you far off?”

She caught sight of Jonathan. “A red dress/’ she said.

“That’ll be topping/’ he said. He leaped up on the wagon beside Clyde.

“That’s the kind of lass I admire/’ Clyde said heartily, “always ready,”

The tali fair young man looked at him. “You old goat!” he said softly.

Jonathan went close to the wagon and touched his father’s knee.
“Good-by, Father,” he said clearly.

Clyde jumped at the touch and looked down. “Good-by, Jonathan, I
was lookin’ for you.”

“I was here all the time,” Jonathan said dryly. “Good-by, Jamie, mind
you take care of Father and don’t run ahead of him.”

“You needn’t tell me,” Jamie replied. His cheeks were red, and he sat
squeezed against the side of the wagon beside his father, a bundle on his
knees.

The wagon started, and the young man whipped his horses until they
galloped away in whirls of black dust, in rushes of grinding wheels and
squeaking axles. Jonathan watched them until the noise was lost in the
distance and upon the wideness of the prairie the dust was no bigger than
what a man might gather in his hand and let fall again.

Who, he wondered, was that tall young chap, and was he joking with
Jennet or not? It was not easy always to know whether men on the prairie
were joking or serious. They told of large happenings in cool, careless
voices, and there was no line clear between truth and lying, either in their
minds or out. He could only discover the truth of anything by chance
and by his own common sense.

But when he turned his head Jennet had gone, and it was none of his
business to follow her to find out what she meant. He had his work to do,
and he went back to it. He went home at noon, dreading but dogged and
determined to be usual. He was never sure of his mother’s mood. If the
farewell with his father had been hard, then she would find something to
blame him for, and he prepared himself for this.

But he found her quiet and cheerful and full of some sort of relief that
he could not understand. They had an hour at table that was gay as they
had not been gay since they left Dentwater. He was so relieved that he could
not but let her know. Alone with her a moment as she followed him out of

THE TOWNSMAN 85

the door, 116 : said, ' **Motfier, i was friglatened to come home because you
might be sorrowful.’’ .

am sorrowful,” she said quickly, ‘‘A woman’s always', sorrowful/ when
her man ,is, away. Everything is tasteless, like salt left out.”

He felt crestfallen, but did not speak because he saw, she w,a,Eted to say
more. It was something hard, for her smooth small face grew sheE-pink.

“It’s time I said something to you as a man, Jonathan,,” she said,, “be-
cause some day you’ll have a wife, Fve asked your, dad to speak to you.
and Edward, but he always dangs himself and won’t, he says, for shame.
But I think of your wife, and I thought of Millie, and on Edward’s wedding
day I screwed myself up and said to him, ‘Let Millie .have the. say-so,
between you.’ That’s been the one thing wrong ’twixt your father and me,
Jonathan. He’s always had the say-so, and however I was afraid of a chid,
coming when I hadn’t the strength for it, his was the say-so. I did cry
when he went this morning because. I do miss him sorely, and still I was
glad to be shut of fear for a while. I don’t want more children, Jonathan,
though I love you ail so dear.”

She had grown more confident as she spoke and yet not less shy, and
she spoke to him with a sort of tender, delicate dignity. As for him, he
was repelled and drawn and a little sickened, too— not by her, but by the
opening of a door he wanted closed between them. All other doors he
wanted open, but not this one. For through it he saw her apart from him;
he saw her not his mother, but a woman having secret problems in her
womanhood which he could never understand, untfi perhaps he himself was
married to a woman. He withdrew from the thought of this woman to
come, wanting no confusion, indeed, no connection between her and this
one now before him.

“I think I understand, Mother,” he said, his mouth very dry. He looked
out over the prairie, searching for something to see and mention. But there
was nothing. The long grass waved for mEes in the unfailing wind, and
the sky was its endless blue. He looked down to the earth at his feet, and
then he thought 'of something.' ■■

“I shall start your garden when I come home tonight, Mother. Evenings
areJongmow.”:

“Do, son,” she said quietly and, in comprehension, they parted.

As THEY had clung to the cottage in Bentwater after Clyde left it, so
now they clung to the sod house in Median. But the cottage had not seemed

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

SO miicli aB isiaad ,as the sod house., There had bcea a score of couaections
with life ia Deatwater, but here a line thrown out could never , reach the
other side' of anything. Median was a steppingstone, a wayside stop. Even
those who stayed had no life of their own. They spent their dayS' in serving
those who were going on somewhere. The inn was made for these, and the
store prospered on travelers, and Stephen Parry put a blacksmith forge In
his carpenter shop that he might shoe horses that passed by.

He came to Jonathan one day with a smooth white pine board. 'Tiease,
sir, Mr.: Goodliffe,” he said .respectfully, ^'will you write me some letters
■on this yere boa’d?”

‘T will, of course,” Jonathan said. He was a little startled at being called
Mr. Goodliffe. No one had ever given him that name before. He was shy
and pleased. ^^But what letters?”

‘'T don’ know the name of any letter,” Stephen Parry confessed sadly.

‘*What do you want said?” Jonathan asked.

*T’d like my name put,” the man answered, ■‘'and that I can do car-
penterin’ and blacksmith’s work and I don’ cha’ge no more’n fair.”

Jonathan drew a sheet of paper toward him and printed, ‘‘Stephen Parry,
Carpenter and Blacksmith. Prices Moderate.”

He looked up to see Parry’s eyes full of wonder and wistfulness upon his
pencil.

“Sbo’ do wish I could read,” he said. “A man’s like in prison when he
don’t read.”

“Would you like me to teach you?” Jonathan asked.

Stephen Parry hesitated. “I’d shore like my children to learn,” he said.
“Wish they was a school for them.” He looked at Jonathan with sudden
earnestness. “Mr. Goodliffe, why don’ you open a school?”

“No one has asked me,” Jonathan said diffidently.

“Wish somebody would, then,” Stephen Parry said.

“How many children have you?” Jonathan asked. He had seen small
dark creatures coming out of the dugout in which Stephen lived,

“Six,” the man replied, “but only four old enough to ieam.”

“Tell you what I’ll do, Mr. Parry,” Jonathan said. “If you’ll lay a board
lioor in our house, Fil teach them Saturday afternoons and evenings.”

“I’ll do it gladly,” Stephen Parry said. He stood turning his hat round
and round. “I don’t know if you noticed my son Beaumont, Mr. Good-
liffe. My wife and me, we think he’s real smart. We’d like him to have a
chance, not jest because he’s ours, but because we figger that now us colored
folk got our freedom, next thing is to show what we can do with it. My wife
and me, we figger we can’t do much ’cept give our younguns a chance to
do what we cain’t. Beaumont’s the one, or so we think.”

“Beaumont,” Jonathan repeated. “A queer name,”

“My wife belonged to Beaumonts befo’ we married,” the man said, “I
was always a Parry, though, and my father befo’ me. Well, I’ll be gettin’
along, Mr. Goodliffe. It’ll be good news to my fambly. And I’ll git the

THE TOWNSMAN

lumber together right away for the floor.” He walked away with Ms pe-
culiar long, loping step. As a boy he had run. beside his master’s coacfaj
and his muscles had grown to it

Thus it came about that Jonathan taught his. first school to four black
children. They appeared ea,rly in the evening of that sam,e day. .Stephen
Parry came with them.

^'Here they are, suh,” he said, when Jonathan came to the door from
the supper table. "This yere’s Beaumont. How old you, Beaumont?”

"Thirteen,” the tall dark boy said quickly.

'‘He’s the on’y one we had befo’ de war,” his fat.her said. "The res* is all
bohn free. This yere’s Melissa, and this one is Gemmie— name’s Ge,m from
that hymn about 'gems in His crown’—and this one’s Paul. Kin I come in,
suh, and take measure of the floor?”

"Come in,” Jonathan said. He felt a little shy before the four children,
all eager and very clean. But he pulled aside the buffalo skin that hung as a
wind curtain against the door, and they came in, standing in a tight small
circle. His mother looked up as she cleaned the table of dishes and food.

"Sit down, children,** she commanded them. They did give one a turn,
she thought, looking at them, but God had made them, though why black
it would be hard to tell They sat down at once, the girls’ starched dresses
crackling. Mary laughed. "I haven’t seen starch since I left England.”

"Ma makes it out of ’taters,” Melissa said in a small voice and coughed
for shyness behind a dark little hand.

"Fll have to get the receipt,” Mary said.

"She soaks ’em real good,” Gem spoke up, not shy at all. "Somepin
white comes out and lays in the bottom of de pan. It’s starch.”

They were all spellbound by the row of black children, lips so red, eyes
so large and black and white. Now Maggie burst out of the spell with a
loud bellow of fright, and Ruth caught her up and took her into the other
room.

“For shame, Maggie!” Mary called, and to make amends cut four slices
of bread and spread them with molasses. "Now eat before you begin to
study,” she said. "Reading is very hard. I know, for once I taught school
myself in England.”

Stephen Parry looked up from the ground he was measuring, "Did you,
ma’am? That’s how your son is so smart, I reckon.”

"Jonathan’s always been very hard-working,” Mary said calmly.

And Jonathan, to rid himself of their talk about him, lifted Arthur to the
chair at the end of the table. “This chap knows how to read as well as
anybody,” he said playfully. "You can help me, eh, Artie boy?”

He arranged the small boy carefully in a quilt and tucked it firmly
about him to strengthen the bones that never seemed strong enough to
uphold even the thin body.

Stephen watched him. "Ailin’?” he inquired gently.

"He’s much better,” Mary said.

AMERICAN. TEIPTYCH

. “My wife mought be able to fix .him some yarbs,” he said. “She's good
on declines: She can tell in .a. look whether a body's goio,' to get well or
not” ■

“There's no doubt about Artie’s gettin’ well,” Mary said quickly, and
as quiekiy hurried on, “Now, Artie,, lad, you shall tell the first letter. Draw
it big, with chalk on the table.”

She han,ded him the piece of crude chalk which Jonathan had brought
home, from the store, and carefully Arthur drew the two long triangular
■ lines and the cross. Everyone watched. Mary watched the pale face. I don’t
want anybody looking at him to see death in him, she was thinking. The
four black children leaned with passionate eagerness to watch.

“That’s A,” Arthur said, very gravely and clearly, looking up,

“A,” all the black children said, loud and quick.

Jonathan felt something pull at him. He looked up involuntarily and
saw Stephen Parry, staring at his children as though he had been struck.
He raised his eyes to Jonathan, and suddenly they were full of tears that
brimmed over his cheeks. He dabbed them away with his big black hand
and laughed.

“Nobody in my fambiy’s ever been able to read a letter befo’,” he said,
“but I don’ ioiow why I have to cry about it now that they’re gonna learn,”

Two days later in the afternoon Jennet came into the store. He saw her
as soon as she stood in the door. She was wearing her red dress and a
small red bonnet that she had made of the same calico. Everyone in the
store saw her. There were no women there. The rush of the day’s business
was over, and the seven or eight men were talking as they lingered over
small purchases of snuff and a dipperful of whisky or a handful of sugar
in a twist of brown paper.

The men around the cracker barrel drew aside to let her pass, and she
went to Lew Merridy, who was dipping whisky out of a tub for an old man
w'hose feet were tied up in rags.

“Any mail in today, Lew?” Her voice, carelessly clear, floated above their
heads.' '

“No, the bag ain’t come in yet today,” Merridy replied. “You expectin’
a letter?”

“Yes, I am,” she said. She stood, her foil red skht swaying slightly.
“What whisky is that?” she asked.

“Stuff I made myself outa com,” he replied. “Wanta taste it?”

“Don’t care if I do,” she said, and put out her hand for the tin cup. She
drank it as easily as water and tipped her head, and the eyes of every man
were upon that white throat. She drank the last drop and handed the cup
back.

“It’s good,” she said.

“Don’t bum, eh?” Merridy replied.

“Nothin’ bums me,” she said. And then, her green eyes shining, she

THE TOWNSMAN

8'9

saoatered over to Joaathaa, and he could smell her breath,' sweet and
strong,

;Tolks tell me youVe teachin’ school, Jonathan/*, she said. ,

He looked, at her and quickly looked away again* '*‘Mr, Parry’s making
us, a floo.r, and Fm teaching his children for pay/* he said, and went 0.13
folding up calico that the morning’s business had disarranged and p,iliog
it up. ,

, “Don know a.ny Mr* Parry/’ she said. “I never heard of anybody but
of Steve Parry* He’s a nigger.”

.Jonathan did not answer. The men were recovering the.mse.lves. now as
they sat about the store. It was' the quiet end of the day. No, one was
buying, only talking. He heard the bits of their talk,,, the news told and
retold from mouth to mouth, the scraps of opinion, the forecasts, prophe-
cies, reminiscences which were forming without his being aware of It a
background of knowledge better than books or newspapers could have
given.

“There’s more’n twelve hundred miles of railroad in the state now, thev
say.”

“Did ye hear that meat’s bein’ shipped clear to New York now, in them
newfangled icebox cars? Looks like we all better take to cattle.”

Capital buildin s finished in Topeka—yep, I saw it last month myself.
A mighty fine sight.”

Thus he knew that telegraph lines ran across Kansas, that there were
colleges begun, that railroads were taking out cattle by the thousand and
bringing back money to be thrown away by wild cowboys in Abilene and
Dodge City, that fortunes were to be made even out of buffalo bones
picked up from the prairies and shipped east for fertilizer. But none of this
had anything to do with Median nor with himself, when days for him
were as evenly alike as though he had stayed in an ancient English village.
“Like my dress?” Jennet demanded.

“I haven’t seen it,” he said prudently from behind a pile of calico,
“Well, look at it,” she retorted.

He waited a moment before he threw a glance at it.

“Very nice,” he said, purposefully colorless* He was startled at heart to
see how she wore red. The violent scarlet subdued her to real beauty. It
dominated her red curls and made them gold and tawny, it deepened the
whiteness of her skin. Only the green of her eyes remained sharpened for
contrast. These eyes were now terrifying to him in their power. He knew
as he knew his own name that he could love a girl and lose everything
he was in loving her. He felt his body tremble and turned his back on her
abruptly, pretending to search a shelf.

“I can wear red because I love it,” she 'Said* ■ “A woman can always
wear what she loves.”

He tried to whistle softly as he ran his hands over the stuffs and could
not because his lips were too dry.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

.Banged if I will love her, -lie thought, and '.suddenly felt sick enough to
retch* He turned about to face her. ‘'Time for me to go,” he said.

^Time for school?” she teased Mm. *^If I weren’t older’n you, Jonathan,
Fd come 'and be your pupil. As it is, what could you teach me?”

-'^Nothing, it’s true,” he said against his longing will. ToO' tight across the
bosom her dress was, he thought, looking at it. He moved to the door
and out into the square, and she followed Mm and caught up to his side.
He was ashamed to have her there in her loud red dress, and, as conscious
of all her beauty as though he had her in Ms arms, he walked sturdily on,
not looking at: her and enduring ah the wMrling of his blood.

She stopped Mm in the middle of the square. “Jonathan, Fm^ going
away”: :

“Are you?” he said stupidly.

“Do you care?” She ' looked from under her ' red bonnet to his eyes,
exactly level with hers.

.“No,” he said, and went' wMte with the effort of the lie.

:■ “You lie,” she said.

^ He did not answer tMs, having no answer.

, Then she asked him one more question. “Are you going to stay in this
hole of a Median all your life, Jonathan?”

'■.“Yes,” he 'replied.

“Dh, well,” she said, and parted from him abruptly, carelessly, moving
through the clear summer light like fire springing along out of prairie grass.
He looked away from her and went on. Fire, that was what she was. He
could not play with her, for she would go on alive, but he would be ashes.
Let her go into the West and burn it up if she would.

He heard the next day that she was gone. She had run away by the earliest
wagon to leave the inn that morning. Who the man was that drove it no one
could remember, once she was missed.

“It was that feller from Pennsylvania, that Dunkard or somethin’ with
a long beard,” Henry Drear moaned.

“No, it wasn’t,” his wife snapped at him. She was shrill with anger. “It
was one of them Rooshians from land knows where.”

They thought by the end of the day it was neither of them, but an
Englishman, the landless younger son of some nobleman, come to America
to found an estate. He had come to Median two days earlier, very elegant
in a waistcoat and high boots, Ms trousers tailored in London, and his blue
coat tight across his shoulders. Jonathan had seen him and waited on him
and had listened in silence to his frequent and impatient cry, “Good God,
you don’t have that, either?”

He had grown tired of it finally and had said quietly, “We carry all that
the people here seem to want,”

The young Englishman had been astonished at his impudence and looked
stem for a moment.

THE, TOWNSMAIs*

''I say, you’re ae¥er , English!”
was,” Jonathan s.aid.

^‘Then you still are,” the Englishman retorted,

Fm not,” Jonathan said .firmly* He had not thought of such a
controversy this moment, and would not .have dreamed ■ of denying
England until now. “Fm American,”' he said,

“The devil you are,” the young man .replied, “Well, certainly this isn’t
England,” he added.

“No, It Isn’t,” Jonathan said, and resisted a.od conquered the Instinct to
add “sir,”

“A blasted proud feller if she’s taken him,” the opinion, in the .store said.
“That sort of feller makes you glad we won the war in 76,”

Jonathan at his post said nothing. If Jennet had gone with the Englishman,
it would be for a purpose of her own. He thought of the directions the tall
fair young man had given her three weeks ago, the day his father, went
away to homestead. Beyond the prairie, farther than the sight of his eyes
would ever reach, a river doubled on itself and made a rich green valley.
Somewhere in that valley she would stay, at least for a day, at least
for a night. He felt a great wrench in his vitals and endured it and went on
about his business.

That evening when he went home he stepped inside the door and felt
beneath his feet a floor of clean white board. His mother hurried to meet
him, and he saw her small face bright as it had not been since they left
England.

“Oh, Jonathan, the floor’s done!” she cried,

“Like it?” he asked. He pretended to test it, to examine it, as be walked
about stamping on it here and there.

“It’s just wonderful,” she said, “it makes me feel at home again to
have my feet on a floor.”

“That’s good. Mother,” he said.

The wintry spring in which Clyde had gone gave way to a summer so
different from any they had ever known that the very sun seemed another
than the one which had shone upon England. Summer in Dentwater had
been mornings of sun-shot mists rolling away at noon over miles of soft
green spreading to blue water in the distances. That green even on clear
days was shadowy with trees and valleys; and under the trees, centuries
old, cattle and men could lie at noon and always be cool.

But in Median there were no trees. The sun flattened the earth with
light and heat which none could escape. Cattle went to the drying river
and stood fetlock deep in the shallow water and moved as the thin
shadows of the cottonwoods moved and shrank and stretched again at
evening. The store became a trap of heat, and if the windows were opened
the dusty winds tore at every floating end of paper and scrap and string

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

and rattled and cracked until the place was full of restless noise intolerable
to hear.

Then the sod house seemed as quiet and cool as a cave.' Jonathan left
it reluctantly , in the morning and at noon entered its dimness gladly. His
mother kept the windows closed and the door shut and ' sprinkled water
upon the walls, and the fresh smell of damp earth added to its coolness.
She had continued somehow week by week to make a place of comfort
out of what had begun as a hovel. The floor had been a cheerful thing to
her, and after it was finished she braided rugs for it out of ends of goods
Jonathan brought her. Remnants he had always. It was one of Merridy’s
complaints against women that they would not pay a penny more for a
few inches w^hich were useless to him. For the women of Median had not
yet taken to making rugs and quilts and cushions and all those signs of
staying that women have. They were not sure of Median yet, and if
someday a man shouted, 9‘WeTe moving on!** then ail their work would
become useless stuff in a wagon too small for necessities.

But Maiy in Median had all the desperate certainty of one stranded
upon an island in midocean, to which no ship sails. There was no hope
of return for her, and she would go no farther; and so bit by bit she created
about herself a little England, Thus, out of all the helter-skelter homes in
Median, sod houses, dugouts, a few of frame, some of frame and earth
together, only hers was like a home when one stepped into it. She had
made a pair of chans out of two barrels and cushioned them with brown-
and-white calico, and they stood beside the fireplace. Her floor was clean,
even though water was as dear as silver and had to be carried from the
tavern well; and upon shelves made of boards resting on pegs driven in the
wall her plates and tin cups were shining bright. When the spring flowers
were gone she picked grasses and put them, merely for greenness, in the
bottles and cans she had made into vases.

Until evening she did not stir beyond her door. The garden which Jon-
athan had planted rushed into fruitage, but now it was dying in the summer
sun. There was too little water, and rain came in storm and deluge and in
a few hours was gone.

^'Everything in this country is crazed,** she told Jonathan one Sunday
while the sky above them sprang with light and roared and crackled and
dropped down upon them in a fall of water. “Nothing is moderate and
thoughtful-like,** She was darting about as she spoke, putting pans and
earthen crocks under familiar leaks. Now that the floor was done, the roof
was their sorrow. Jonathan had talked with Stephen Parry about it.

“It’ll have to be took off,’* Stephen bad said, “and proper rafters and a
real roof put on. But it’ll never be so cool no more.**

“Wait until autumn, then,** Jonathan had said. Let the roof shelter them
from sun, at least. It was a queer-looking roof, for the sod had grown long
grass, and the wild sunflowers had seeded in it, and it was like a garden.
But it let the rain through in streams and grew sodden with the weight of

.THE TOWNSMAN 93

water, until Jonathaiij ^fiighteiied at Its sag, put posts and .planks under it
lest It fall upon them in their sleep and the. sod house be their tornb. .

^^Crazy it is, Jonathan agreed with his mother. ■

He was glad it was Sunday when this storm ca.me and .that he was in.

. this low^earthen home that clung to the ground, instead of in the iimsy
store^ building where the lightning ' seemed to dart th.rough from window
to window. He was ashamed to show fear a.fter he had once seen Mrs.
Merridy afraid. He scarcely ever saw her, for she s.eIdom left t.he back
rooms where she lived; but if the sky darkened . to storm, she came into'
the store, a thin, nervous, silent wo.man,' carrying o.n. either arm' a.

She set' them ^down in empty boxes and then, herself on a stoO'l betwee.n.
them,, she waited, her arms locked across her breast, until the storm was
over. No cheerfulness could touch her. Between the cracks of thunder she
said doleful things to her husband.

It was a' storm like this that struck Hasty’s Mil! last summer. Lew.’’

^^Didn’t do much hurt,” Merridy said, twiddling his fingers at his baby
sons sitting placidly in the packing boxes, sucking at hardtack.

“If they hadn t caught it, the whole place would have been burned up,”
she reminded him.

“Yep, but it wasn’t,” he said. “You never seem to remember that. Be-
sides, couldn t nothing bum in a rain like this,” The rain W'^as pounding
upon the tin roof.

Jonathan, working hard over books, trying not to see the Hashes of green-
ish light, trying not to hear the falling of the heavens in thunder, felt the
sweat stream under his clothes until he seemed to stand in water in his
shoes. It occurred to him once to wonder where Katie was in storms. She
darted in and out of the store daily to cry out, “Ma wants some crackers,
Pop!” or “We’re clear out of salt,” or to bring the empty molasses jug.
But in a storm he never saw her. He asked her once, “What do you do with
yourself in a storm, Katie? I should think you’d come in where we are.”

She threw her skimpy brown braid away from her shoulders.

“I ain’t afeared like Ma is,” she said, and after a moment went on,
“Lightnin’ only hits you if you’re feared of it,”

He thought of this saying of hers thereafter in any storm, and he thought
of it now, under the dripping ceiling of the sod-house roof. If it were true,
one day he would die by this prairie lightning.

But summer was made of storms and drought and dry blue sunshine.
They were wrenched from one extreme to the other until they were phys-
ically weary of it, except Maggie, who thrived and grew. Against the vio-
lence of weather, each maintained himself as he was able. Ruth that sum-
mer began to study Latin. She begged it out of Jonathan at meals and
while he hoed the garden in the morning, trying to coax dew into rain by
his mulching. Arthur took to his bed again and lay long hours with his eyes
closed, holding his life in him by silence and stillness. And Jonathan main-

•94

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tained himself by markkg off the hours of his days mto exact routine of
one kind of work and another.

The one marvel which the days held was Beaumont, the black boy. For
in this child of a strange race there was an intelligence the like of which
Jonathan had never seen, and he knew humbly that It was far beyond his
own. The other three children learned well enough, stammering through
their primers by the end of summery but Beaumont was reading not so
much by letters and words in sentences as by the ideas he discovered. He
was the tawniest of these dark children, in the brownness of his skin a
dark gold, and in the blackness of one of his eyes was a strange blue fleck.
His hair, too, was thicker than that of the others and less like wool.

“^What’ll I do with you, lad?” Jonathan asked half in play, but in alarm,
too. “My learning won’t last like this.”

“I don’t know,” Beaumont said simply, “and my mother, she don’t know.
She’s always askin’ me that”

They looked at each other in mutual wondering gravity. This boy, lon-
athan told himself, must not be wasted; and yet was he not doomed to
waste? ,

The summer ended sharply on a day that Clyde came home. Twice he
had written, vague windy letters full of matters of which they could not
discern whether they were plans or things already done. The land was
filling fast, he wrote. It was lucky he had not delayed. People were com-
ing in from all over the world, from England and Russia and Germany
and Sweden. There was even an English duke’s son, people said, with plenty
of money. How would she like to be neighbors with a duke’s son? But
everybody was the same here and a duke’s son no better than anybody
else, •'

“Oh, the big zany!” Mary cried, when she had made this out of Clyde’s
wandering handwriting and fanciful spelling. “As if a duke’s son could
ever be a nei^bor to us! Jonathan, you mark my words, some day there’ll
be trouble out of all this equality, for all of Clyde’s talk don’t make him
equal to anybody if he isn’t bom so.”

“That’s sense, Mother,” Jonathan agreed.

They put Clyde’s letter away, both decently disturbed at the idea of
a nobleman for a neighbor.

“What’ll happen next?” Mary said severely.

On a September day, early and suddenly cool, Clyde came limping in,
bis leg healed but a stick still In his hand.

“Mary!” he shouted at the door. There was no one in sight, and they
might have been dead if it were not that there were squashes yellow in
the garden and the home so clean, and a painted green tin of autumn
flowers on the table, which made him know that Mary was alive.

“Clyde!” she screamed and came running in from behind the curtain.
“Oh, Clyde!”

She flung herself upon him, and he held her with one arm and laughed.

THE . TOWNSMAN . .95,

‘‘You’ve W-anted m.e!’^ .he cried trium.p!iaotly. ‘‘You’ve T!iiss.ed me, eh,
wlfer

“Terrible,” s.he s.aid, forgetting everything. .

Nobody was In the house to hear her,, except Arthur in bed— luckily,
louathaa was ii.ot home yet .and Ruth 'had gone out w.ith Maggie tO' keep
her safe from the snakes in the long grass.

“Oh, if s been sore without you,” she sighed. “They do fe..eir best, the
children, a.ad Jonathan a.lways a dear lad; but theyYe another generation
from us, Clyde.”

“Ah,” he agreed. Now that he was sure of her, he suddenly .felt hUGgry
and tired. “Let me alone, dear heart, for a minute. My, leg’s hurtin*.”

“Oh, is your leg still bad?” she cried. “Let me see, Clyde.”

He sat down and stretched it out, and she pulled up his trouser leg
and looked at the deep angry scar of twisted muscle in the side of his calf.

“If 11 never be right,” she mourned, touching it gently. His iesh was
sweet to her again.

“! can manage,” he replied. “Fve managed wonderful”

“Where’s Jamie?” she cried suddenly. “Why, I’m a wicked mother, for-
getting my son. Where’s the boy, Clyde?”

“I left him out there, Mary,” Clyde said.

“Clyde!” she screamed. “Not alone in all that wild country!”

“There’s neighbors in the next section hut,” he said. “And you can’t
leave a foot of homesteadin’ now, Mary. Somebody’ll steal it while you’re
gone.”

“Oh, but, Clyde, a little boy!”

“He’s growed wonderful this summer,” Clyde said. “And thirteen ain’t
a little boy. He was thirteen last month.”

She was on her feet now, very angry. “All the same, you had no right
to leave him, Clyde. But then, you never had proper feelings for a father.
Ifs always what your children could do for you, never whafs your duty
to 'them.”, ■

“Of all the rambunctious silly notions!” Clyde cried. “If I hadn’t begot
’em, where’d they be? I gave ’em life!”

“And dragged ’em here to live it!” she retorted. She sat down, sighing,
and wrapped her arms together. “What’s he living in?” she demanded, “Has
.the ohild'a' shelter?” ■

“Now, Mary,” Clyde said. “Listen to me before you’re all slathery and
frettinl He ain’t goin’ to be there long. Fm goin’ back— with you and the
children is my prayer, without you if so be I must. Fve decided you’re
right about Jonathan. Seventeen is a man, and let him have his own mind.
But Fve a home and three hundred and twenty acres of the best land-”

“WTiat kind of a house?” she interrupted him.

“Mary, I won’t say ifs anything but a good sod house, but frame’s to
come,” he replied. “I’ll promise you—”

LFpon them at this moment Jonathan returned, for it was noon.

96 -

AMERICAN ■ TRIPTYCH

/ “Well, Father/Vtie said

“Wei, lad,” its father replied.

“Jonathan, your father’s left Jamie behind,” his mother cried.

“Only for a matter of a few weeks,” Clyde said to him. “Yon wouldn’t
knoW ' Jamie. He’s growed like a man—inches higher he is, and he rides a
horse like a cowboy. There’s wid horses out there, and he’s corralled two
of them, and gentled one of them. Wonderful clever, he is, and bom for the
life. If s a big life and calls for big men.”

Within himself, at that familiar loudness of his father’s voice, Jonathan
felt stubbornness solidify in his being.

“I daresay,” he replied and, coming in, he poured a little water into the
tin basin and washed himself before food. “Got to get back,” he said.
“Mr. Merridy’s busy this afternoon with autumn stock.” He threw his water
carefully upon the squash plants outside the door.

His mother rose and began to set the table. In the distance over the
rising slant of the land Ruth was following behind Maggie racing ahead of
her. ^

“Median’s growed, I see,” Clyde said to his son.

“Twelve families,” Jonathan replied.

“Too thick for me,” Clyde remarked. “Now, out there you can look as
far as eye can reach and see only your own land.”

“And Jamie there without a living soul!” Mary cried. She could not
forgive him.

“Oh, shut up, do!” Clyde shouted.

They’re off again, Jonathan thought hopelessly. But somehow he felt him-
self no longer in the quarrel. He had no more to do with it. It lay deep
between them, man and woman of whom now he was no longer a part.

He sat eating while they wrangled. When Maggie came in he lifted her
to his knee and wiped the dusty sweat from her face and fed her from his
plate. Then he left them still wrangling.

What might have been the end of that quarrel who could have known?
It was ended by Arthur, that feeblest of all their house.

The quanrel had come to her saying over and over, “Anyhow, I will not
take Artie so far, Clyde.”

“You’ll be no furder from doctors there nor here,” he retorted. “And
the air’s better there—fine upland air it is, and it goes straight up till it hits
.the Rockies, folks say.”

“We’ve kept him alive somehow by staying put,” Mary said. “He’ll
never stand moving.”

They discussed this, looking down at the pallid little boy upon the bed,
and he looked up at them as though it were hard to draw his feeble breath
between them.

“But would you come back, Mother?” he asked in his small weak voice.

“Fm not going, duckie,” she replied.

THE TOWNSMAN

,**YO'ij could leave Mm with lonatlian uotil he grows stronger,” C-Iyde,
said.

‘'l.wiil not,” Mary retorted. It was now taken for granted that lonathan.
would not go. Neither of them saw the terror in the sick cMid's' eyes.

Jonathan, that night, gathering up the little armful of bones to rest them,
felt them feverish.

“You’re hot, Artie,” he said. ■

“Jonathan,” the Ittle skeleton whispered, “Is my dad stronger than my
mother?”

“He is, I reckon,” Jonathan replied, “but what of it, my whippet?”

“Then Fm afraid of Mm,” the child replied.

“Nonsense,” Jonathan said cheerfully. “He’s fond of you like all of us.”
He felt Arthur’s forehead and was alarmed, “Mother!” he shouted. ‘'*Tliis
boy’s burningl” '

She came hurrying in and felt of Arthur’s hands and' head and feet.
“He’s' cold and hot in different parts,” she said. “Oh, Jonathan, put him
down and go for that black woman!”

He ran through the autumn twilight for Stephen Parry’s wife. But with
a strange slowness she did not come at once. He left her promismg to
come, and they waited for her through a night of fitful sleeping wherein
he sat for hours holding Arthur in his arms.

She came in the early morning when another clear autumn day poured
out its sun, and in that strong light she looked carefully at the sick child,
beside his tMstledown so large and brown and strong that none of them
doubted her for a moment. Then she went into the other room and stood
among them.

“I kin bring him some yarbs,” she said in her deep voice, “and I kin
bring down his fever. But when it’s brung down, he won’t have nothin’
strong enough to live in him. The fever’ll draw his life all out when it goes.”
She looked at Mary. “I didn’ wan’ to tell you, ma’am, but the firs’ time
I saw him ! knew his end.” ■

She stood there as though she herself were beyond the life and death
she seemed to understand so well. “Fm mighty sorry for you, ma’am,” she
said to Mary. “But not for Mm. If s a hard time to live now except for them
that’s strong. He’ll be spared what would have been beyond his strength.
You remember that”

She went away, and In the silence left behind her there was no more
quarreling. Mary went to Clyde and crept into Ms arms, and he held her
before them all, and Jonathan rose and went into the other room and,
kneeling beside the bed where Arthur slept, he buried Ms face in the quilt
and silently wept. In a moment he felt someone there and, looking up, saw
it was Ruth. He need not be ashamed before her, but he rose and to-
gether they stood hand In hand, tbeir eyes solemnly upon their brother.

Only Maggie knew nothing. She was outdoors, running after the big
brown woman. But she could not keep up with that long, tireless stride, and

9 $'

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

after a few minutes sbe sat down io the middle of' the road and happily
sifted its. dust in her hands. . ' '

" 'The house was intolerable in the waiting hours. Strangely, it was Clyde
whom they all comforted, for he was the one the least able to bear it. He
sat with Ms stiff leg outstretched before Mm, blaming himself for every-
thing until for sheer necessity of relief they comforted him.

' **Fin: the one that’ s killed him,” he said again and again. 'If s me that’ s
wicked and wouldn’t see how my poor little lad was.”

"Hush. What could we have done?” Mary said.

"I could have took him back to the East,” Clyde moaned "Fd have took
him to England afore this.”

"He’d have died upon the sea, Father,” Jonathan said.

"At least he’ll be buried on proper land,” Mary said. She had not wept
nor for a moment left Arthur, except to come as she had now to fetch
something for his need. Clyde rose to follow her, but she stopped him.

"Stay away from him, do,” she said. "Let’s let him sleep himself away
in peace.”

It was a heavy peace in which Arthur died. Stephen Parry, when his
wife came home and told him that the child was set for death, had made
a small coffin from green cottonwood.

"ShaU I black it. Sue?” he asked her. "I got about enough lampblack
to do it.”

"He’s so little,” she replied, "Lefs use whitewash.”

He made the small casket as white as snow with lime inside and out
and brought it on the day when it was needed, and lifted the little body
in and laid it down.

Arthur was dressed in the suit he had worn when he left England. He
had been proud of it that day because it had a tie, and Mary remembered.
There was no cemetery in Median, but in an acre to the south of the town
some lay buried, nearly all of them those who had been on their way
westward and overtaken by age or illness had been delayed forever. Beside
a newborn child whose mother had gone on, Arthur’s grave was dug.

This day was the first in which Jonathan saw, all together, Median’s
people. They had come one by one to bring food and fuel and water and
offers of help in those last days, but now they were all here. Samuel Hasty
and his wife and two boys, Henry Drear and Mrs, Drear, and he remem-
bered for a second Jennet and put her out of his mind again. He saw
Stephen Parry and his family standing a little apart, and a man married to
an Indian squaw and his five half-breed children, all whom he knew well
or less well. They made a blur of people, poorly dressed, sunburned and
windblown. They were strangers until Lew Merridy, because there was no
minister among them, began to read aloud a psalm,

"For the days of our life are as grass that perishes,” he read.

THE TOWNSMAN

'99

Aroimd them the long prakie , grass waved in the auturim, spnlight. Bot
in the midst of it stood this handful, of people gathered about somethlag of
their own now to be buried here. Jonathan saw their faces Idiid and ful'l
of sorrow. Somej to whom this hour brought memory, were weeping, and
suddenly, he felt them friends.

That night i,ii the house that seemed empty because something out of its
life was gone, he was not surprised when his mother said, .^T'onathan, Fm
going with your father, after .all”

"'T know. Mother/’ he answered.

'There’s Jamie to think of,” she said.

“I know,” he said again.

Once she had set her mind, she could not quickly enough do what
she had decided, and Clyde hurried her because he said they must not
waste the autumn weather. Winter would fall soon that year, ,eve,rybody
said. The prairie beasts were already digging deeper holes, and the grass
was dying early.

In sad haste to be gone, Mary packed into a wagon that Clyde had
bought the things that she must have—a mattress, quilts and her English
blankets, their winter clothing and other heavier clothing from Merridy’s
store, dried food and seeds of all kinds, and she sliced the best of her
squashes into strips as the Indian woman who lived in Median had showed
her how to do and dried them in the sun and wind.

But all she truly valued she left behind with Jonathan. There was the
family Bible which she had brought from En^and, into which at her bid-
ding he now wrote in his most careful hand, “Arthur John Goodlifi[e, born
in Dentwater, England, November 10, 1862. Died September 3, 1871, in
Median, Kansas, in the United States of America.” There were the pictures
of her mother and father and of herself and Clyde on their wedding day.
There were , her fewTinen sheets and her two pair of pillowcases edged
with crocheted lace she had' made, and her-. half-dozen china plates and
teacups, and a silver necklace with an agate set in a locket, and a brooch
with her mother’s hair, and the picture of Edward and Millie on their
wedding day,.' and the picture, only newly come, of their first c'hild, a boy,
Tim, nanaed after 'Millie’s father, '

And with all she put into the wagon she took care to leave the house
looking as it' had for Jonathan’s sake. In the midst of her daze of sorrow
and -unwillingness she had her moments of 'thinking of how he would man-
age and even of ' whether she ought not to leave Ruth to take care of the
house for'.Mm. ' ' ' ' '

“Though how to do with that Maggie without Ruth i don’t know,” she
sighed. “Sometimes it seems' : as if Maggie took- ’all after Clyde. She’s on
the run from dawn til! dark, and what with the deathly snakes and holes
in the ground and now out there wolves maybe and Indians and I don’t

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

kEow' , wliat, I haven’t the strength for her. Jamie was the same, only it’s
. worse when a' girFs like. that”

^ "You keep Ruth, Mother,” he said. "Fli manage.”

And to Ruth he said privately, "Mind you think and spare her ail you
can, 'and some day 111 make it up to you and give you whatever it is you
want most”

"Oh, I wM without that,” she said.

He noticed ' her shadowy sweet eyes when she spoke, and thought to
himself that somehow none of them noticed Ruth enough. She was one
of those easily forgotten, whatever they do. It would have been pleasant
to have her here, but he could let his mother go more easily if Ruth went
with her.

"Do you think you could manage a letter to me sometimes to tell me
how Mother is?” he asked.

"I never wrote a letter, as you know, Jonathan,” she said seriously, "but
I can try, and the words I don’t know I can ask Mother.”

"It’s you I should have been helping instead of those black children,” he
said m quick remorse. "But it’s too late now.”

"I had always to get Maggie to sleep and see to things at night,” she
said patiently.

They left in seven days from the day it was decided, and Jonathan stayed
away from work that morning to help them off. There was agitation and
excitement, and Clyde kept shouting things forgotten and promises of what
was ahead. He hustled them into the wagon at the door of the sod house,
Two mules he had not paid for pulled it, but Jonathan had signed the note
that promised payment if his father failed to do it.

"Get in, get in, woman!” he shouted to his wife. "A late start is bad luck
ail the way.”

But he delayed them after all. They were in the wagon, and the wheels
all but turning when Mary said, "Have you the homestead papers, Clyde?”

"Of course, of all things,” he retorted. But he felt in his pockets, and the
papers were not there. Then began the tumbling of goods and the searching
and Clyde’s cursing and swearing, until Ruth, looking up at the family
Bible on the shelf, saw papers sticking out and pulled at them, and there
they were. Clyde had put them there.

"Dang it, the Bible’s the place for safekeeping things, and I never
dreamed you wouldn’t put it in,” he cried to Mary.

"The Bible’s to stay here with Jonathan,” she said.

"What, and we have no Bible?” he roared.

"I want it with Jonathan,” she said stubbornly. "Then Fll know it’s safe.”

He yielded at last, and they were off in such confusion that there was
only a moment left to Jonathan in which to say good-by to anyone. He
gave it all to his mother.

THE TOWNSMAN

101

“Oh,. Jonathan,” she cried, weepin.g,- “take care of everythiog.’' ,

“Yoa tak.e care of yourself, Mother,” he- said. He held her m Ms arms,
and for the first, time knew how big he had grown because she felt so small
to him, “Good-by, my dearest dear,” he muttered, and let her go.

Part Two

Whether he had stood looking after them or whether he had turned
blindly back into the house, he never knew. He saw their faces, each stok
clear for an iostant-his father’s full of haste and absorption, Ruths fright-
ened, Maggie’s round with wonder, and then his mother’s, ye^mg and
weeping as she looked at him. Her gaze reached for him. He felt a tangle
of pain in his breast, and his eyes smarted. He must have rushed back mio
the house, because when he was clear again he was working m a tury a
the Hkhps to be washed and floors to be swept.

“I hate to leave such a mess for you, Jonathan,” his mother had said in

her last look about the rooms.

“I’ll clean up in a jiffy,” he had answered.

But it was not a jiffy. He lingered over everything, exhausted now that
there was no more need for him to be strong. And now that his mo&er
was gone, there seemed no reason why he should not have gone with her.
The house and the garden, which had been impossible to leave when s e
was in it, was nothing when she had left it; and bis job, that had been an
anchor when it brought into the house the only sure sum of money each
week, seemed worthless. He did not like shopkeeping, he thought moodily
to himself as he went about the house. Shopkeeping ancestry and lus moth-
er’s belief in the soundness of trade made him good enough at it, but it

did not satisfy his own hungers. .

He had had no time in these months to think of his hungers, but now
they rose up in him. He paid them heed as he worked through the ^ter-
noon. Hk mother had said, “When we’re gone, Jonathan, make the house
comfortable for yourself. Take the inside room for sleeping, and thra you
can live in this one with the fireplace, and it’ll be more convenient.

104

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He had asked Merridy for the day free and had been given it, and he
moved his belongings and took down the curtains from his corner. The
sod house seemed big and full of room now when only he was in it; and,
as the hours moved on, the quiet and the space enlarged, and with them his
loneliness and his unsatisfied longings. He felt himself grown and a man.
But a man’s life must have more substance than he had in Median. In
Dentwater there had been sources to which he could go— Mr. Hopkins
and school and colleges and books and learning; the vicar and those good
days when he had tinder in him; the sea and the ships at Blackpool and
Edward’s business in the chandlery, which, buying and selling only common
things, yet touched every port in the world. He thought of his own room
in the stone cottage when upon a fair day he could see white sails upon the
Irish Sea, and he went to the door of the sod house and stood looking out.
He saw nothing except the long, unchanging slope of the prairie. There
were no sources for him here.

But as he watched he saw coming across that space, so nearly level, four
small black figures, "fhey were his pupils, Stephen Parry’s children. He
wished that he had told them not to come because he was tired and because
he wanted to go on with his mood of dreaming melancholy. He had for-
gotten to tell them anything, and so they were here as usual.

He watched them drawing nearer. The two youngest loitered behind,
and Gem walked quietly along alone. But Beaumont, when he saw Jon-
athan, broke into a loping run and reached him far ahead of the others.

‘^Huilo, Mr. Goodliffe,” he panted.

'‘Hullo, Beaumont,” Jonathan replied. The boy’s dark face was in an
ecstasy. "What’s happened?” he asked.

“Say, Mr. GoodMe, I finished that whole book you gave me yesterday.
I couldn’t stop— I kept on reading, and my father let me have the candle last
night until I was finished.”

The book was Robinson Crusoe. Jonathan had won it once as a school
prize in Dentwater. What he saw was himself, now in Beaumont, mustering
his courage once, long ago, to walk bravely to Mr. Hopkins and to say to
him, out of deep excitement, "I finished the whole of that book, sir— I
couldn’t put it down.”

His book had been a translation of the Odyssey, but that did not matter.
What mattered was the eagerness and even the adoration with which he
had looked upon the schoolmaster as the source in which he could find
knowledge and wisdom. Now he saw in this boy’s eyes the same adoration
and the same eagerness, and it was he who was the source.

"Good,” he said shortly.

He was too touched and too alarmed to say anything more. But at the
head of the table he taught twice his usual length of time and with a new
and stern exactness.

The next morning he rose early and made and ate his breakfast. Then

THE TOWNSMAN

105

he crossed the square to the store. The door was open and he went in, but
nobody was there except Mr. Merridy, picking his teeth and looking at
the last newspaper to reach Median.

“Good morning, Mr. Merridy,” Jonathan said.

“HeEo there,” Lew replied without looking up.

“Mr. Merridy, I want to give you my resignation. I hope you won't
mind,” Jonathan said.

“What’s the matter?” Merridy demanded.

“I’m going to start a school,” Jonathan replied.

Mr. Merridy put down his paper and looked up. “We don’t need a school
here, Jonathan,” he said. “There ain’t enough children to support it.
“There’re sixteen children that I know, sir,” Jonathan replied.

“No, there ain’t,” Mr. Merridy replied. “Hasty’s have only two young
boys, and that fambly down in that dugout on top of the river bank has four.
That’s only six. And the newcomers ain’t settled yet whether they’re
stayin’ or not. Median’s a town that’s bound to grow, but there’ll be a lot of
cornin’ and goin’ before the final shakedown, and folks that’s on the move
can’t bother with schools.”

“There’re four Parry children,” Jonathan said gently, “and Bill White

has six.” . I j. i>t

“You ain’t goin’ to have a school for niggers and half-breed Indians!

Mr. Merridy cried. “Why, it’ll ruin ’em if we begin educatin’ them. Besides,
what’ll we do with them when they’re educated? They’ll be fit for nothin ,

I tell you, Jonathan. I been meanin’ to speak to you a long time about
your teachin’ those children. You’re doin’ them no real good, nor the town.”

“Beaumont’s a very bright boy,” Jonathan said. “He’s much brighter
than I am, Mr. Merridy, and I know it.”

‘^Then there’s all the more reason why he shouldn’t be educated, for the
day he knows it will be a sad day for you and for all of us, Mi. Merrid>
said. His voice grew severe. “I tell you, Jonathan, it was a terrible thing to
bring black slaves to this white man’s country, but it was more terrible to
set ’em free. No man knows what’ll come of it for any of us. And when
you teach ’em to read and write and hgger, you’re puttin’ the white man s
weapons into their hands, and they’ll use ’em on you and on me.

They looked at each other steadily.

'T can take that risk better than I can the risk of saying I won’t teach
Beaumont,” Jonathan said, and after a moment he said again, ‘‘Not to
free the mind after you’ve freed the body doesn’t seem to me fair.”

Lew Merridy grunted, picked up the paper, shook it, and pretended to

■ read, ■

“Besides,” Jonathan went on, “there’s Katie, sir. I should think youd

want her to go to school.” . - ,

“No, I don’t,” Merridy replied. “I don’t believe in educate females.
She’s learned to read from her mother, and I’ve taught her how to courit
up figgers to help me. I can’t see any mortal use for her to know more.”

106

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He rattled the paper, looked grim, smoothed his uncut moustaches and
coughed. .

you take my resignation, sir?’’ Jonathan inquired.

Mr. Merridy threw down the paper once more, you son-of-a-gun,

are you stil! resignin’?” he shouted.

‘Tes, sir.”

'‘WeE, go on and git out of here!”

‘‘I will,” Jonathan replied, and he put on his hat and walked out, his
knees trembling. Merridy owed him nothing. He had drawn the last of his
wages to glYC tO' Ms mother two days before. And he had nothing except
the small stores of food in the sod house. If he was to have , a school, he
must have it at once— that he might live as well as work.

But there was only himself to feed. For the first time he saw good in
his loneliness. If they had not gone away and left him, he would not have
dared to do what he was doing. He would not have recognized himself in
Beaumont’s eyes or waked in the night to discover that what he wanted
to do was to teach school and not to stand beMnd a counter.

He suddenly ceased to miss even his mother. Uie front room he would
make Into the schoolroom, and the fireplace would heat it in winter. The
other would be all he needed for himself. If each pupil brought his own
stool, he could put up long planks on posts for desks, two rows of them
with an aisle between. He had only his own few books, but there was the
big Bible, and in every house which he entered he would ask for books.
A blackboard he could make easily enough, and there were lumps of chalk
in the store. He had enough wherewith to do his work.

It was a fine day, he now noticed, a fine day for his family moving some-
where over the edges of that horizon between earth and sky. But it was a
fine day for him, too. The autumn sky was blue, there were no clouds, and
the long grass was turning a deep red-brown. It moved in the ceaseless
waves of the wind, but the wind was no enemy today. It blew the clean
cool air across the prairies, and he breathed it in and was strengthened
and excited. This was a good country, and maybe ail the better because
there was everything to do in it. In England he would have been struggling
to get a job ahead of hundreds of other chaps wanting schools. Here he
was the only one between east and west, north and south, as far as his eyes
could see, who wanted to teach a school; and suddenly in loneliness he rec-
ognized adventure.

Ah, here was the biggest adventure under the sky right here in Median!
Why did folk go traipsing West? Tramping along he began to whistle loudly
an old song his mother sang, *‘Oh, you’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the
low road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye!” and, still wMstling, he knocked
on the door of an old, usually empty sod house. A new family was stopping
there for a few days. He knew their name was Cobb, and that they were
moving on. But they might not go on if there was to be a school in Median.
He had seen boys and girls running about.

THE TOWNSMAN

107

■ A smatt plain-loolcmg woman came' to the door. *'^Wha! do you want?’*
she asked.

'®How do you do, Jonathan said gently, taking off his cap.

about to start a school here, ■ and wanted to know if yoifd be Interested.”

'*'Come in,” she replied. “Come right in.”

He, stooped as he went in, for the door was too bw even for, his m,edium
height .

“Sit, down,” she commanded him. “Now then, tell me about the school
’^liats.your own abilities, young man?”'

Her sharp gray eyes picked out of him what she ,lik,ed, and he ,sub-
mitted to them,

“Fve been taught in England,” he said. ,“I was to have go,ne up for the
college exams if IM stayed. The man who taught me was Ca,in,brid.ge, and
he thought well of me. My mother was a teacher, too.”

“Why ain’t you goin’ West like everybody else?” she demanded. '

He did not want to open his soul to her. “This seems far enough to me,”
he replied.

“So ’tis,” she agreed. “More’n far enough for me, too. Ohio was what
we started for, but as long as there’s any West left, my husband seems
bound to get at it. I tell him he’ll keep on till he hits the Pacific and then
go on wadin’ until he’s drowned. It’s a disease, that’s what it is.”

A boy and a girl of nine and twelve came in softly on their bare feet
and stood behind her, staring at Jonathan.

“If we could get some kind of job to tide us along, maybe I could
persuade Adam to spend the winter here and give ’em six months of
school, anyways,” she said,

“He could ask for my job at the store,” Jonathan said. “I’ve just quit it.”

“Say,” she cried, “that’s an ideal”

She jumped up, a dry little figure of energy. “I’m goin’ to put it through
—what’s your name, young fellow?”

“Jonathan Goodliffe.”

'That’s a mouthful,” she said, laughing. “Weil, Mr. Goodliffe, this is
Martha and this is Matthew, and they’ll be there— if we can pay the tuition,
that is,”

“The fee’ll depend on how many I can get,” Jonathan replied. He had
only this moment thought of It. “Maybe a dollar a month apiece wouldn’t
he"to0 much?”'

: “If we get the job, we can manage somehow,” she said. “The oxen we
won’t need' if we stay, and we can maybe sell ’em. Yes, sir, put down
Martha and Matthew Cobb.”

“Oh, Maw!” Matthew wailed. “Ain’t we goin’ West?”

“Not this winter if I have the say-so,” .'she said firmly. “It’ll be your
last chance at books.”

“But you always have the say-so!” he cried.

“So I do,”' she agreed

1;08

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■“Well, good-by, Mrs. Cobb,” Jonathan said. Matthew and Martha— he
gave them a quick look. Martha had said not a word. She stood motionless,
■a sandy-haired,, drab child in a sacklike dress of buff calico,

^^Good-by,” he said, putting out his hand to her.

She' was still speechless, but he felt her rough little hand in his.

^‘'Good-by, Matthew,” he said. ‘‘I think you’ll like school, maybe.”

**No, I won’t,” the boy said. ‘1 don’t see any use in books.”

remember that,” Jonathan replied with mildness. This " was a queer
gfim-looking lad, his mouth narrow and tight and his eyes already sharp.

He went away and walked across the square and down the road a quarter
of a mile to the mill on the edge of the river. He knew it very well, because
he had taken grain there which farmers brought to the store to exchange
for goods, and now he went to the mill door instead of to the house.
Samuel Hasty was there in the midst of a dimness as white as mist with
flour. ■

''Hello, Mr. Hasty!” Jonathan shouted above the racket of wooden
machinery.

The little miller saw him and came out, as white as a moth, from behind
a bin. "Hello,” he said. "What you want, Jonathan?”

"I’m going to start a school, Mr. Hasty.”

He went on, and the miller, chewing tobacco steadily, listened. That
black hole of a mouth was startling in the dusty whiteness which covered
him from head to foot, so that even his pale blue eyes were lost in it. He
spat a blob of black saliva that rolled into a ball in the floury dust at his
feet

"I dunno,” he said. "Schools are awful dear, and boys get such notions
at ’em. I don’t know about the whole idea. Afore we know it well be
havin’ an aristocracy in this country with all this education.”

"But I plan to have everybody send their children,” Jonathan said.
"Stephen Parry and Bill White—”

"I dunno’s I want my sons goin’ to school with truck like that, though,”
the miller objected.

Jonathan did not answer for a moment. Then he began gently, "A
school’s a civilizing thing, Mr. Hasty, We can scarcely call this country
equal to England if we don’t build schools.”

Mr. Hasty looked away, "I can’t pay your costs,” he said.

"Pay me what you like,” Jonathan replied, "in meal or in fliour or in hay
bundles. Fuel will be my problem. I won’t have time to gather grass.”

"Well, it’ll take thinkin’,” the miller said.

"Think about it, then, sir, and send me Abram and Sam if you think
well of it,” Jonathan replied.

He tipped his hat and went on. By the end of the day out of Median’s
thirteen houses and out of four farmhouses within walking distance he had
the promise of seventeen pupils. And then in the late afternoon, being well
content, he turned toward Stephen Parry’s carpentry and forge.

THE TOWNSMAN

109

It was empty wheii lie stepped iotO' it, but tbere was a fragrance of
cooied and seasoned meat and of corn pone. He grew ravenously buagry
as he smelled it and, picking up a horseshoe, he struck a slab of iron^ which
stood against the wall. Beaumont came running out, a piece of pone in his
hand. He put it behind him when he saw Jonathan.

.‘Tail come right out,’’ he said.

“No, Fll come in, Beau,” Jonathan said gaily. “Fm, hungry, and you can
give me a bite, maybe.”

He did not see Beauniont’s look because he was already across the room,
and :theri because he clapped the boy’s shoulder and walked a,long beside
him through the door.

The fa,!iiiiy were at supper, but everyone sprang up.

“Don’t get up!” Jonathan cried. “I just thought maybe you’d give me a
bite, Mrs. Parry. I want to talk to your husband about school desks. Fm
going to ha.ve a school. Will you give me a bite?”

“Yes, suh,” Sue Parry said in her soft big voice, “Fll set you a place in
the shop, Mr. Jonathan.”

“No, you won’t,” Jonathan said. “HI sit .right here between Beau and
Gem. Then we can talk.”

He was already sitting down when Stephen stopped him. None of them,
had sat down.

“Mr. Goodiiffe, suh, we take it as an honoh. But it won’t do you no good,
suh, They’s goin’ to be trouble enough without it, anyways. It’s hyere
a’ready, suh.”

'^What trouble?” Jonathan demanded. He stood up, compelled by their
refusal to sit down with him.

“The town’s split clean in two just today already,” Stephen Parry said.
“Right on your trail Mr. Sami Hasty has been folierin’, and it looks like
I oughtn’t to send my children at all, on account of the trouble itll
make, suh. I got my livin’ to make.”

This, Jonathan perceived, was what Hasty had meant by “thinking,”
“ You mean you’re not going to send your children to me?”

Stephen, looked, down. “A,in’t no use educatin’ ’em if I cain’t feed ’em,”
he said simply.

, “Mrs. Tarry, " Jonathan began, but she stopped him.

“Mr. Goodiiffe, you’re newcomer, suh, of co’se, and I know that you
means kindness. But it would be better if you said Steve and Sue, like
everybody does. We’s black and: we knows- it.”' .

“Beaumont,” Jonathan began again but she took it away from him,

“Beaumont is black, too,” she said firmly.

“Why, there was a war about this!” Jonathan said.

“War ain’t changed no feelin’s,” Sue said.

She was so large, so sure, so wise, so sad, and all of them were so silent,
that he felt overpowered. Then he saw Beaumont. All his life he had hated

no . AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

his father’s petulant profanity, and out of this hatred he had^ never once
used it. Now suddenly he needed it, and it burst out of him.

/ ^'Of all the dangety-dang, dod-blasted, goddamned injustice!” he shouted.
“I .won’t give in to It!” ■

, ''Beau ain’t my son,” Stephen said quietly, and Jonathan stopped as
suddenly as though a sword had been put to- his neck.

“His father’s a Beaumont,” Stephen said, “young Pierre Beaumont.”

“I hadn’t no choice,” Sue said, sadly. “I wasn’t but fifteen when he was
bawn, and I belonged to the Beaumonts.”

“When, ol’ Mrs. Beaumont found out,” Stephen' went on, “she wanted
to marry Sue away, and I heard about it, and I had seen her, and so of
Mr. Stephen Parry, mah massa, spoke for me. Beaumont knows how It all
happened, don’t you, son?”

“Yes,” Beaumont said, “I know.”

That purely shaped golden-brown face did not quiver, but Jonathan
looked away from it.

“I shan’t give up,” he said stubbornly.

All of his blood was troubled and sickened and stirred by what Stephen
had said, but he was determined in spite of it. Somehow in the end he
would have them all sitting together in his school.

“You’re mighty kind,” Stephen Parry said.

“No, I’m not,” Jonathan said. He frowned. “What I really came for,
Mr. Parry, was to see if you would make some long desks— planks set on
posts will do.”

“Yes, suh, Til be glad to,” Stephen said.

“All right,” Jonathan hesitated. They were all looking at him except Sue.
She stood with her head drooped and her hands hanging by her sides.
Upon her soft, full face there was a look as still and as curtaining as a
cloud.

“Well, good night, Mrs. Parry,” he said sharply.

“Good night, suh,” she replied, without lifting her eyes.

He went out, walkmg very quickly and loudly, and turned toward the
sod house. He was not hungry any more, but when he got there he would
boil some milk and stir a little corn meal into it and feed himself.

This he did, and all the time angry and confused and torn between cau-
tion and Impetuous wish to go out and demand justice from everyone for
the black children. Why had Stephen told him that story? He could make
nothing out of it for a reason. It was not white blood that had put any
genius into that dark body. Plenty of white blood was stuff as dull as skim
milk. No, it was Beaumont seed in Sue Parry’s fertile flesh.

He felt an excitement so strong that he was abashed by it, and he got
up and began to pull at the furniture he wanted to arrange. Yet it was not
an excitement of the flesh, nor had it anything to do with anyone he had
ever seen, nor even with htraseif. It was as vague and as powerful as the
pull of the earth beneath his feet and as the light of the moon and the stars

THB TOWNSMAN

ill

Eow above Ms head, and its excitement lay in the mind. For suddenly. Ms
mind perceived that, when two bodies lay together, iii.ale a.nd female, any-
thing might come of it, and it all depended on the two. For the irst time
he thonght definitely of his own marriage and, of the sort of woman he
wanted and would have.

No middling sort, he thought, but someone big and glorious, Eke, what
Fve, never seen. Except maybe, a . little , like Jennet outside, if inside she
could be like his mother. He meditated 'upon this magic until his head was
swirling and his face was hot, and the fioor scrubbed so clean that he could
not bear to step on it himself.

,The school opened on the first day^ of October, .and he was tolerably
content because before that day he went to every house and argued out,
whenever it was necessary, the matter of the Parry- children. To .some it
meant nothing. Bill White, drowsing in the ,autumii sunshine, w'oke up to
laugh.

“Hell, I don’t care/’ he said. ‘^Some Ekes ’em black, some likes ’em
white. Myself, I like ’em brown. My squaw satifies me. It don’t worry me
none when she has- a papoose what it’E be. I figure in a country like this,
give ’em time, we’ll aM be mixed anyway. There’s yeller men from China
over at the Gold Coast, they tell me. Hey, there!” he yelled at the Indian
woman who was cutting pumpkins into long strips, “you don’t care what
color your of man is, do ye?”

She shook her head and laughed and showed big white teeth.

“Naw, she don’t care,” he grunted.

So three half-Indian chfidren sat in school as erect as statues and stared
at Jonathan as he wrote the alphabet upon the blackboard. For days they
would say nothing, and never was he to know how much was silence and
how much ignorance. But they were the ones who brought him prairie
fruits he had never eaten before, wild plums and grapes and hazelnuts and
pecans and Mack walnuts of trees so distant he did not know they existed.
They brought strings of diced dried pumpkin and dried blackberries and
raspberries and rhubarb and pickled bufialo peas and, before frost came,
sheep sorrel that Katie stayed after school one day to make Into a pie, still
sourish even though she poured in molasses. And they brought him freshly
killed rabbit, and quail and prairie, chickens. He had half his living from the
Indian children, .'andnever'.a ..dollar in cash....

But not all were so easy. Lew Merridy held out against the school until
Katie herself settled it “Sure Fm coming to your school, Jonathan/’ she
said. She had come into the store one day when she heard his voice.

“Oh, you are, hey?” Merridy said. “And how about your ma and the
/twins?”-:,.'.,,,:.:;

“Ma’s got ’em about weaned now,” Katie said in her practical little
voice.

Merridy stared at her, scratched his head, and laughed. “Well, if she

112

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

says she’s gom’, she’s goie’,” he said. ‘'But it don’t alter anythiiig 1 said,
Jonathan. I don’t believe in educatin’ colored people, Indians, and females.
They don’t need it, and it only makes trouble for the rest of us.”"

■ A farmer and Ms wife came to the door, and Mr. Merridy shouted at
his new clerk.

I'Hi there, Cobb!”

A longlegged man unfolded himself from behind the counter and Mer-
ridy watched him.

“Says he’s goin’ on in the spring,” he turned Ms head to tell Jonathan,
“but I ain’t so sure. Looks like the missus wears the pants there, however
long Ms be!”

“Wouldn’t It be better to educate females, then?” Jonathan asked,
smiling. ;

But Merridy shook his head. “Naw! Naw, sir! They’d all be wearin’ pants
then!” ■

So out of the bustling little handful of individuals that made up Median
Jonathan gathered together the children and started his school.

In late autumn he had his first letter from Ms mother. He read it over
and over again, trying to lift the curtain of the stiffness which fell upon her
whenever she took up a pen. But the years in school had shaped her beyond
change. He had seen her when she wrote, her preparations, her gravity,
her solemn summoning of pious phrases.

“My dear son Jonathan!”

He could see her small pursed mouth and straight figure, and the pen
held elegantly upon her little third finger.

“I take my pen in hand to say that we have with God’s help reached
our destination and, wMle our circumstances are not the best, we can en-
dure them for the winter. Your father plans in the spring to stake out still
another claim in the hope and expectation that by large-scale farming of
cattle . .

“Oh, my little soul, but how are you?” Jonathan muttered. There was no
finding out. If he had not had his school, he would have set forth to find her.
But he had these children, for another family of his spirit, and he could
not leave them. To teach them satisfied him in ways he could not Mmself
understand or indeed perceive. He only knew that he was happier than he
had ever been, even in Dentwater; and, though he often missed his mother
sorely and in other ways missed Ruth and even the lively mischievous
presence of Maggie, he had other things. He had that profound fulfillment
of putting into hungry minds something wMch fed them. Not that all minds
were hungry! Even in these children of all ages and several bloods, there
were as many minds as he could Imagine. But he learned to know them
one by one—which wanted food and wMch must be fed even against its
will; and which, like Katie, knew positively what It wanted and would
have no more.

THE TOWNSMAN

1.13

■ He laughed at Katie a good deal* She had suddenly begun to groWj and
her spare little body took on the curves of a meager adolescence. This
seemed ridiculous to him. The .first time he observed the shght swelling of
her .new breasts . under an outgrown cotton dress, he thought them as
absurd .as pinfeathers on a bristling pullet. When she ■ began to put on
grown-up .. airs he teased her and pretended to de.fer' to her. But she was
always equal. to Mm.

“Jonathan, you should lay up hay bundles for winter, else you’ll get
caught , by the snows,” she told .him one day after school

“If I must I will,” he said good-humoredly.

“And you must ask one of the .big .boys to tend fire for you,” .she said.
'.“B.etter ask the biggest, Indian.. And the water bucket i.s.n’t filled often
enough, and I saw that biggest Cobb boy pour back the water out of his
dipper today.”

“FH attend to' everything, Madame,” he said.

S.he was such an ugly little thing, he thought, looking at her out: of
laughter; so completely comm.onplace except for that aggressiveness of her
nature which burst out of her stiff pigtails and her sharp haze! eyes and out
of every movement of her quick, thin little body. He could not- imagine
her growing up into a real woman.

“Jonathan, there’s a preacher coming through on Sunday,” she said.

“A preacher!” he repeated. “Well, I never, Katie! There’s never , been a
preacher in Median before, has there?”

“Yes, sometimes he comes once a year or maybe twice,” she said.
“And I want you should go to the meeting, Jonathan.”

“Why?” he asked, amused.

“ ’Cause folks say you ain’t hardly religious enough to be the teacher of
a school,” she said. “They say you don’t read the Bible and pray before
school like you ought”

“Oh, that’s what they say now, is it?” Jonathan retorted.

He thought about this a moment. He did not doubt for a moment that it
was true. Katie brought him everytliing she heard said in the store.

“Well, it won’t hurt me to go to church once a year,” he said. Then to
tease her he added, “Will you be there, - Katie?”

. “Of course,” she replied solemnly. “Fm a baptized Christian,”

For some reason he could not understand, be went into loud laughter,
and -when, she plainly thought him mad, only laughed the more.
■:,,“-Oh,',,dear,” he nried .at last “Oh^

. . “Are. you laughing, at me?”: she .Inquired., ' '

-He .nodded and '.began 'to laugh'again.- ■"

.., “Don’t .you .like me?” . she inquired ' again, and he saw she was hurt.

“Of course I do,” 'he. s.aid,- and stopped ■. at once, and on m impulse
reached over and took her little claw of a hand and patted it. Then to his
horror he saw her thin child’s face change and turn crimson.

“I like you— something terrible,” she whispered.

114

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“That’s nice,'* he stammered, and dropped her hand as though it burned
him. .

Jo0Y Spender, waiting for her father to amiounce the hymn, sat holding
upon her knees the big old accordion she had played for him ever since
her mother died. He was at least six minutes away from the hymn, and
so she looked idly upon the faces of the people gathered in the main room
of the tavern this Sunday morning to worship God. She knew American
House very well. Off and on they had come here, she and her mother and
father, almost as long as she could remember clearly, which, since she was
seventeen, was now almost a dozen years. At first there was only the tavern
at the crossroads, east and west, north and south, and people drove to it
for meetings. Then year after year a few houses began to collect in this
place called Median, until now it was a prairie town like so many she
knew. Her mother used to think that her father would be a great preacher
some day, maybe in a city church, and then they would settle down. But
long before she died she had stopped talking about it, and they all knew
this hard traveling from one small town to another was what had been
and would be, as long as Joel Spender lived. “A bearer of good tidings,**
Joel called himself.

“What’s to become of you, Judy?** her mother had fretted. Her fretting
kept her alive long after she wanted to die. “I could go in peace if I knew
what was going to happen to Judy,’* she moaned to her husband.

“The Lord’ll look after His own,’* Joel said positively.

“There’s never been any sign of Judy’s being the Lord’s,** Mrs. Spender
retorted with a faint revival of old rebellion.

“Well, she can come along with me, and certainly I am the Lord’s/*
Joel said.

His wife groaned. But there was nothing she could do about anything;
and one day, when Judy was not quite twelve, Mrs. Spender gave up to the
tumor that had enlarged her thin figure into obscene shapes. Years before
she had wanted an operation for this tumor, in the days when it was stilt
manageable; but Joel would not hear to it.

“I would hold it to be a lack of faith,” he said. “You know Fm a faith
healer, Mitty, and Fm not goin’ to yield to temptation.”

He prayed faithfully at certain hours eveiy day that God would heal his
wife and believed each day that she was better, and then, as the tumor

THE TOWNSMAK- ' ! 15

grew in size , and power, he , lengthened his hours of prayer and, mc.reas.ed
the strength of Ms pleas.

God!” They could .hear his voice booming heavenward through .thin,,
hoardinghouse walls in tow,iis and .under trees beside ,in,ns and .out of the
shadeiess prairies. ‘'Hear Thy servant and heal Thy, serva,nfs wife! Thy
servant do.nT ask for anything beyond Thy will, O God, but I do ask that it
is Thy will to heal Mittyl”

When she spoke again of operation, he was sterner. than ever.. “No,
Mitty, there ain’t goin’ to be any operations. This here’s come to be a tussle
between .me and God, and Fm goto’ to win.,”

Mrs. Spender said no more. She had hoped in God for a good man)
years,, but now it became plain to her that the trouble all along had been
that' there was no way of discovering what God’s will was until it was too
late to do a,nything about it. And it began to be clear to her before long
that In her case .God would triumph over Joel. She did not tell' him so,
but she made her own preparations. One of these was to talk, as plainly
as she could to Judy, who was the only child she had left out of seven.
The other six had died young, and sometimes when she lay helplessly sup-
porting the parasite that fed upon her, she remembered them, and she
wished she had not given them Bible names. Only Judy had not died, and
Judy she had named after a woman on a boat who had helped her when
the child was born. “Judy” the woman had been named, and that was
all Mrs. Spender knew about her. Later she had found the name Judith in
the Bible, and then she told Judy, “Your name is just Judy, not short for
anything else.”

Or maybe the child had lived because she was born on the Missouri.
People said it was good luck to be born on water. Anyway, she had al-
ways been a strong, healthy little creature with red cheeks and bright dark
eyes and yellow curls, Joel was dark, too, but he had never been healthy
because of his weak digestion, nor ever smart enough to account for Judy’s
forwardness. It was terrible to die when Judy was just beginning to need
her mother’s care. But God’s will was the one unchangeable thing In the
world, and there was no use in asking for mercy if God had made up His
mind. She called Judy to her one day and said, “Judy, Fm going to die,”

Judy opened her brown eyes enormously. “How do you know. Mama?”

' “It’s God’s will, so there is no use m talking about it. What I want to
talk about is "you, and what you’reto do after Fm gone. You listen to me
.now,' Judy,” ' ■

“Yes, Mama,” Judy replied.. Her mother was so matter-of-fact that it
was' like bemg left behind at a boardinghouse the time she had whooping
cough." . .

^ v“yoU''go on with " your father a for Mm like I do,

..and lead the "hym,ns real' good and' loud.: And don’t ever let a man put his
hands on you—never! Not for nothing! But " if a plain hard-working man
with a job in a steady place asks you to marry him, you leave the work

116

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

rigiLt away and let your father fend for himself, and stay with your husband
as long as you live.”

light, Mama,” Judy said.

**Thafs all, but don’t you forget it,”

■ Mama.”

At the bottom of her heart she never had forgotten it She kept it there
as a secret with her mother from her father. When her mother was alive
they had often had secrets together, such as the keeping back of pennies
from the collection to save for a dress for Judy.

“It’s all right to have secrets from Father, if God knows,” her mother
said., ■

“Did you tell God?” she once asked her mother.

“God knows everything anyway,” her mother had answered.

If God knew about this secret, He gave no sign of It, though sometimes
she was sure He did know and purposely kept anybody with a steady job
from asking her to marry him. Now in the tavern at Median she yawned,
and remembered that her mother had told her to put up her hand whenever
she did. Then in the middle of her yawn she caught a pair of blue eyes
looking at her with secret laughter, and she closed her mouth abruptly.
The eyes belonged to a young man of medium height whom she had
never seen before. He did not look like anybody else in the room. He
wore a neat suit of brownish cloth and a stock and collar, and his brown
hair was smoothly brushed. His face, she noticed in the quick, all-seeing
glance she gave him, was pale, a little thin, and, while it was neither ugly
nor handsome, it was pleasant.

Her attention was snatched by her father.

“Judy!” he said sternly. “Fve called the hymn— it’s 'Beulah Land.’ ”

She started into the tune and pumped her accordion back and forth as
hard as she could. Then she lifted her voice, loud and clear.

Watching her, Jonathan thought to himself that he had never looked at
so pretty a girl. He had seen her almost at once when he entered the
room. Coming out of the brilliant sunshine of late autumn, for a moment
everyone had looked pallid to him and shadowy, everybody except a fair-
haired, brown-eyed girl in a dark red dress who sat with an old accordion
across her knee. She did not see him, for her eyes kept wandering, but he
watched her while the people gathered to sit on stools and benches and on
kegs and boxes set in ragged rows in front of the bar. The shelves behind
it were decently draped with Indian blankets to hide the bottles, and the
bar was made into a pulpit with a white sheet. Mrs. Drear had put a salt
jar full of goldenrod on it, and behind it a tall dark man stood to preach
and pray.

Jonathan, his ears too sensitive, could not listen to him. The preacher’s
fervor was poured into sentences every one of which had words pro-
nounced awry and mistaken in grammar. So he kept looking instead at
the young girl, a beautiful, pouting thing, sitting so carelessly beside the

THE TOWNSMAN

117

peipit that, if one brown hand bad not held tbe accordion firmly, It would
have slid, from ber knees. She bad sat smiling and brooding and certain!}'
not listening and tlieii suddenly lifted her bead 'for a great yawn, and in
the. middle of it she had see,ii Mm laughing at her.

He .was a little alarmed by the suddenness with which she shut her jaw-',
and by the look she gave him. Then he decided doggedly not be afraid of
her, and to give her look for look. He kept on looking a.t her when the
preacher called to her, and she began to play furiously with a!.! her strength,
upon the accordion. When she sang in a clear loud voice he found himself
sin.gmg, too, although he hated singing in church. The vicar' in Dentwater
had. not encouraged the co.np*egati.on to sing, and it seemed indecent so
to expose oneself.

But .he excused it noW' beca.use ' here was, after all, only the tavern,
which was always full of noise and roistering, a.nd he could .not believe
this ranting evangelist was a minister like the vicar, a.nd this was no, proper
hymn' tune, either. The girl was playing it like a dance, swaying as^ she
played it, exaggerating its rhythm and letting her voice soar—a giorious
voice, but not for hymns. In Dentwater he would have been shocked by
it, but here it made him want to sing too.

''A pleasant true voice, our Jonathan has, but not good enough for the
church choir, was what his mother had said once long ago. He cleared
his throat and let Ms voice out a little louder.

And after the meeting was over he went up, not to the preacher, but
to her. He had always to forget his own shyness, and he fought it now.

“I am Jonathan Goodliffe,*^ he said. “Excuse me if I introduce myself.^'

She put out her brown hand, and he felt it soft and plump. “I am Judy
Spender,^* she said.

“The minister’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

He could' not restrain himself. .“Then' you’ll be going on, won’t you?”
he asked.

“It depends,” she said, “Sometimes we stay, if folks w'ant a protracted
meeting.”

“Then l hope they will,” he 'Sald earnestly, “in fact— That is, Fm very
sure they.: will”

She laughed with a hearty parting of the reddest lips he had ever seen.
“I hopeao,” she said. ' “Fd like to stay somewhere for a few days, anyw^ay,
just .to get a chance, to wash our clothes.” '

: “You must stay,” he said. Under his calm. iace his heart echoed, “You
must— you must,” and then he felt her hand pulling softly out of his and
realized, to his horror, that he had been holding it ail this while.

He went away so confused that he did not think of anything else until
the::;,middle.. of ■.:&©: Sun^^ dinner which. he- was eating with the Merridys.
How it had come about that this was Ms weekly habit he could not have
said himself, but so it had become. Katie had begun it by demanding one

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

day what he had to eat in the house because, she declared, he was looking
thin, and then had answered herself by looking into his crocks and opening
all the boxes and bags. The next day she said firmly, “Maw says you're to
have Sunday dinner with m reg’lar, and if youTe too proud you can take it
oS my tuition.”

That was at least the beginning of his going each week into the three
rooms back of the store and playing with the twins while Katie and her
mother worked. Mrs. Merridy, thin and pallid and corded with stringy
muscles, was a bom cook. Her rabbit pies, her saleratus biscuits, her com
dodgers with pork cracklings, her spoon breads and sour-cream cakes, her
greens and pickles and preserves and com-meal puddings were concocted
for strength and delight; and In spite of himself once a week Jonathan ate
to the full and spent Sunday afternoon in a pleasant stupor with the family.
He was aware at such times of a great deal of comfort in these three
rooms. With the resources of the store at her command, Mrs. Merridy
had muslin curtains looped back from the windows, braided rag rugs on
her wooden fioors, a big circular stove in winter, and rocking chairs and
cushions padded with cotton. She had somehow found plants to pot for
her windows, red geraniums and swollen begonias and a hearty Boston
fern. Upon the walls were texts and mottos worked in wool, and two large
crayon portraits of her parents framed in gilded wood.

In the midst of all this comfort Jonathan was aware, without noticing
it, of Katie’s narrow, bustling figure, arranging and rearranging, setting the
table, lifting the cat out of a chair, keeping the twins quiet with sharp
little slaps and sudden scoldings, and insisting upon some whim of her own
for his greater comfort. She darted at him from time to time. “Jonathan,
don’t sit there. The brown rocker’s better . . . Jonathan, put your feet
on this stool.”

He always submitted to the pushing and pulling of her determined little
hands, because it was easier to submit to her than not. She was capable
of endless argument until she had her way.

Today in the midst of dioner she said sharply, “Jonathan, you ain’t
eatin* a mite.”

“Yes, I am, Katie.” He was embarrassed by her notice, for it was true
he had no appetite. He could neither eat nor think because of Judy.

“Leave him be, Katie,” Mrs. Merridy said dolefully. “I know how it is
when you’ve been to meetin’. It takes your appetite sure enough to get
thinkin’ again on eternal things, and then it don’t hardly seem worth while
to feed the body. I declare, Mr. Merridy, I think we ought to ask Brother
Spender to hold a week’s meetin’ before the winter sets in. ’Twould give
us somethin’ to thiok about in the long evenin’s, and maybe save some
souls from goin’ to hell if anybody should die, as they’re bound to do.”

Lew gave a grunting chuckle and swallowed a great mouthful of roast
pork, A farmer had brought him a side of freshly kfiled pig in payment of
the season’s bill, and he loved it.

THE 'TOWNSMAN ■ 119

**Well, yoE know what I always say, Liila—they’s more soiils' made thaB.
saved at these here protracted meetin’s.”

«Aiid I always , say for shame, Lew Merridy, for s'liclii talk, , especially
before young folks, to put such notions Into words.''

“Godamighty, Lula, Jo.nathaii’s a grown man—”

^Well, you’d oughta begin to think about your own daughter,” Mrs,
Merridy said.

Mr. Merridy gasped. “Why, Katie-she ain't but a little girl.”

“Fm almost fifteen., Paw,” Katie said severely.

He looked at her, pretending to be astonished. “Why, so you a,re, you
little, pullet!”

.“And I know what, you mean,” Katie said virtuously, “and I don’t think
you ought to talk about , it”

Lew, about to pick up his great mug of coffee, .set it down again and
burst Into big laughter and clapped Jonathan on the back.

“You and me’ll have to go eat in the kitchen, Jonatha.n,” he bellowed.
“We ain't decent.”

Jonathan smiled and glanced at Katie with a faint disgust he did not
understand, except to know that he did not like to think that her mind
comprehended such things as—as the making of souls. But, though he did
not know it, this disgust, too, was because of Judy. Ever since he came
walking in a daze and a glory into these rooms he had been thinking of
Judy and of how to go about getting a protracted meeting. Pie was too
honest to pretend to a religious need. Such vague need as he had was
satisfied by the chapter of the Bible he ^ read occasionally at eight before he
slept, and by the prayers he said night and morning, simple ritual prayers
that his mother had taught each of her children when they began to
talk. Such variations as he had privately added to them had never come to
anything. When he had prayed the last one it had been that his brother
Arthur might not die, and when Arthur died, his first thought had been,
“FH never ask God for anything again.” There was no rebellion in this
decision, but the simple giving up of hope that his destiny could be altered
by any plea of his. God’s mind, whatever it was, was always made up
beforehand, and it seemed more dignified in a man not to go whining and
begging with his own prayers. He could not honorably persuade his neigh-
bors to have a week’s meetings of prayer and preacbdng when he himself
considered such prayers futile and wanted .only to .see a beautiful young
girl every day for as long as he could.

He listened when Mrs, Merridy began' scoldingly, “Now, Lew, stop act-
ing like a behemoth and give me some help. There’s a lot of unconverted
people come into Median over the summer, and if we could get ’em con-
verted we’d all have a better winter. You know you say yourself meetin’s
do a lot of good— folks pay their bills and men buy things for their
families.”

“Oh, I ain’t objectin’,” Lew said. “Howsomever, it’s a little iate for folks

120

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH'

^ to sit outside^ and I don’t -believe Drear could let ’em, have the tavern
every day right BOW when folks are humpin’ through to get West before'
■•Winter.”

■ An inspiration fell upon, -Jonathan. He lifted Ms head and said quickly,
“They could use my schoolroom, if the parents were willing for school
to let out a week.”

■ Lew was struck. “So they could,” he said. “That’s a real idee, Jonathan,
and parents won’t mind. They’re always glad to get their children' con-
verted young— it saves a lot of switchin’ sometimes. I ain’t switched you
since you was babtized, have I, Katie?”

“No, Paw,” Katie replied.

“Don’t know but what it’s a good idee ail round,” Merrldy said. “Folks
can drive In and get their winter stores and get some soul food, too. You
gotta have religion in a community, or folks get to killin’ each other, espe-
cially in the winter when they’re all shut up together. Don’t know but what
I’ll mosey around myself this afternoon and see Brother Spender and the
Median folks. I’m a religious man at bottom, Jonathan.” He laughed some-
where down in his belly. “That is, if you can find bottom!”

Jonathan pushed his plate away. Food dried and swelled in his mouth,
and he could not swallow.

“I don’t feel quite well, after all,” he said. “Please excuse me, Mrs.
Merridy.” He leaped to his feet and went out of the room. He was so
excited that he could not sit still nor listen nor speak. He must get away
by himself to think and to try if he could to see what to do with himself.
He was going to fall into love with Judy Spender!

In those days of the protracted meeting, because of a peculiar inarticu-
late honesty, he gave up his own private prayers. His house was full of
praying, but he felt embarrassed to pray his little childish prayer. He rose
early every morning and swept out the rooms and wiped ojB[ the benches
and tables and the blackboard, and went outdoors and picked purple au-
tumn flowers and put them on his table that was Joel Spender’s pulpit. Then
he ate his breakfast and waited. But he had only to wait a little while. For
Joel came early to have him write upon the blackboard his text for the
day, and with him came Judy. In his neat, square, very clear script Jona-
than wrote great violent thundering curses, while Joel stood roaring them
out' ■

“Thou Shalt be brought down to Hell, to the sides of the Pit, They that
see thee shall look upon thee saying, ‘Is tMs the man that made the Earth
to tremble, that did shake Kingdoms , , Thou art cast out of thy Grave,
as a carcass trodden under foot, for the End of Evildoers shall never be
renowned.”

“Howl, O gate! Cry, O city!”

“The cry is gone round about the borders of Moab, the howling thereof
unto Eglaim, for the waters of Dimon shall be full of blood.”

THE TOWNSMAN

12 !

“Father’s practickVoa yoo, Jonathan,”. Judy. said fnischlevonsly. .She
stood by the door, pulling whispers of fragmentary music out of her accor-
dion, beginnmgs of tunes she did not finish, the catch of a gospel chorus,
the lilt of a. tune she had heard in a river boat somewhere, a deep chord
or two unfulfilled. She looked someti,mes at Jonathan, but more often :Oiit
of, the door at the^ sky and the prairie.

“I ain’t,” Joe! said. But he could not go on rolling out Ms words. He
was pricked and angered. “You’re a real thorn in the flesh, Judy, like your
ma was to me,” he said indignantly. “I prayed God. like Paul for years
to plu.ck it out, and when your ma died, I thought He had. .But He shore
left a stinger behind in you,”

She did not answer, and Jonathan, tu.rning his head quickly, saw her
profile, smiling, and he turned away again, frightened at t.he vehemence of
his first love.

Then, that men and women and even children might be quickened to
hear God’s word, there came over the prairies that week such lo,ng golden,
days as he had never seen. People from Median came w^aiking in the quiet
sunshine and along the path the school children’s feet had beaten every
day to the sod-house door, and through the- long grass a few wagons came
in, bringing men and w'omen and children. They looked alike, their gar-
ments faded to drab, and their skins burned red and brown. But when they
talked they changed, and their eyes kindled differently, blue eyes though
most of them were. They lingered outside to talk, starv'ed for talk, and
Joel had to call to Judy to start music before one by one they came into
the shadow7 room.

“My squaw says it’s the Indians’ summer,” Bill White said. He sat in the
sun, drowsing upon a bench at the door from where he could look away
from Joel’s dark face out to the smooth tawny red of the grass, quiet for
once under a windless sky. When he looked long enough for peace he
would listen to Joel’s demands. “I will confess before men that God is
good,” he drawled.

“Are you saved, Brother White?” Joe! yelled.

“I been saved a long time,” Bill White said.

‘^Anybody else been saved? Anybody else want to be saved?” Joel cried
and raked them with his red-hot eyes.

If nobody answered, he shouted at Judy,: ‘*Flay something, girl! Play
something to waken ’em outen their death-sleep!”

And Judy, her beautiful face unmoved, played “Just As I Am Without
One : Plea” with such passion, such pleading, that they stirred upon their
seats,.; and .a. .few rose miserable and ..sweating to mumble out their sins.
But Jonathan could not move. He was not for one instant deceived. When
Judy 'played he knew he thought, not about God, but about her.

As day went into another day, his thinking ceased to be thought and
became mere longing; until one afternoon, unable to endure, he rose and
went into his bedroom and sat there upon a stool waiting for them all to

122

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

'be gone/ Wbeii they were gone she came in, pushing back her hair' from
her face*

"'^Oh, rm tired,” she^ sighed and, seeming to belong here as she belonged
anywhere, she threw herself upon his bed.

■ He was shocked and yet he trembled and looked at her and saw every
turn of her bosom and her thigh. And she opened her eyes which she had
closed and saw, him.

'‘Come here, Jonathan,” she said.

He rose, unwilling and yet compelled, and went over to her and sat
upon the veiy edge of the bed.

“Is this your home, Jonathan?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And shall you live here always?” she asked.

“I daresay.”

“Oh!” She sighed and dung out her arms. “Think of waking up in the
same place every day!”

He did not answer this, being too busy with his own feelings. “Oh, my
lovely,” he was crying to her inside himself. “Oh, my lovely, lovely dear!”

“Jonathan, lie beside me!” she said suddenly.

“No,” he said grimly.

She opened her eyes at him. “Didn’t you ever hear of bundling?” she
demanded.

“No,” he said.

“Well, it’s nothing wicked,” she said, and laughed at him. “Why, you
just He down together, all dressed, like this, and talk, an’ that’s all.”

“How could it be all?” he muttered. And, terrified because he was rush-
ing headlong down into the pit he saw ahead of him, he leaped to his feet
and strode into the other room. It was empty. Even Joel had gone, forget-
ting Judy, as he often did. And when Jonathan saw the emptiness, he went
straight out of the door and on to Median.

Fm terrible wicked, he thought. Wicked he was if it meant what he
wanted to do and would have done if he had stayed a moment more beside
her. He went into the tavern. Henry Drear was behind the bar,

“Give me a mug of whisky,” he ordered.

“Never knew you to want that,” Drear said, grinning. He dipped up the
liquor from a tubful that stood on the floor behind the counter.

“Never wanted it before,” Jonathan replied. He stood drinking the hot
stuff morosely and waiting the subsidence of another heat in himself.

“Guess it’s religion,” Henry Drear said affably, “A lot more folks stop
in here for a drink when meetin’s are goin’ on.”

“They do, eh?” Jonathan said.

He hung about the tavern silently all evening while men came and went.
Once he went into the kitchen where Mrs. Drear was cooking over the
red-hot iron range.

“I sure do miss Jennet,” Mrs. Drear said, mourning. “I wish I could

THE TOWNSMAN

123

get a letter from her. , But 1 reckon, she can*t find nobody to write .it, and
she never wouM ieam. her letters to write herself/^

He had not thought of Jennet in weeks, bnt it seem.ed to him now that
Jennet, had begun, the love of Judy In, him. He went home at last and
listened half -fearfully as he lit the candle. If Judy were here, .he was lost.
But. she was gone. He lifted the curtain between the two rooms and saw'
his bed tumbled where she had lain on it, perhaps to sleep. He went .and.
.stood looking at that impress, and love came creeping in.to Mm again.. She
was i.niioceEt, an innocent untaught child. Was she not innocent? His heart
cried out that she was; and then Ms mind, remembering her fiung upo.n
his bed,, put forth its cold little .doubt Could she be innocent? ■

The s.trange heat of delaying summer steeped the prairies in w^arroth
and in silence. Day after day of the seven days even the wind was ' stiil,
and in the sod house Joel Spender changed the. manner of' his preaching.
He left the prophets and turned to the Song of Solomon. He showed tliem
a God no longer angry, but pleading and longing to win their hearts by
love. He stood before them in his old black suit, a shabby man until one
forgot him in the dark fire of his eyes and in the power of his sonorous,
pliant voice. If this was the voice of God, then these were the words of
love, and hearts of fiesh were moved to answer love with vague love. They
stood up, ashamed, shy, muttering something of what they felt without
understanding what it was, their faces red or pale, but always disturbed
and always ashamed as though they were miserable. Only Beaumont was
joyful and without shame in Ms confession.

‘T do praise Gawd!** he cried gladly, and leaped to Ms feet.

“Praise Gawd!** Sue murmured from the comer’ where they 'sat apart.

But they forgot their shame when Judy played her accordion in great
surges of sound. They were at her mercy when she played, and she played
as she willed, and they followed her. Sometimes she made them gay, and
once the little black children even began to clap to her rhythm.

She, played, more quickly, and suddenly Sue’s high voice seized the
melody and led It along to ecstasy, and they were all singing:

“Jesus! Thy very nam.e I love,.

Thy sweetness fills my breast*’

" Jonathan, Ms eyes upon Judy, felt his heart- smolder In his bosom. For
she, drawing her accordion to and fro, swaying to its measure, turned to
him and looked at him directly as .he sat in Ms corner far from the door.
They had not spoken together again, and' tomorrow would be the last day.
He had not prayed, nor had he risen when 'Joel had cried out for them
to speak and to declare what God had done for them. He had sat through
all exhortations, disliking them and feeling shamed by them. Yet he was
converted and he was changed, though not, he knew, by God.

Lew Merridy, sitting next to him, nudged him suddenly. “The devil’s

124

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

gok* to make the most of this, lonathanF’ he whispered, ‘‘You caiii’t take
the lid off folks without somethin’ happens

Jonathan did not answer. He must speak once more to Judy. What he
would say he did not know, for he did not know what he wanted of her.
But he could not let her go without tying between them somC' sort of bond.
Not a promise, for he was not ready to promise and too prudent to do it
unless he was ready. Only he must know at least that she was coming
back.

At the end of that day when the people, weary with exhortation, , were
straggling across the ragged square into their homes, into the tavern, some
of them harnessing horses to wagons to go to their farms, Judy delayed
at his door. Joel had gone ahead and did not look back to see whether
or not she followed him.

“Well,” she said, “it’s almost over.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed. He spoke with the mild preciseness that was
natural to him and that hid so completely his turmoil.

“Has it been like you thought it would be?” she asked.

“You mean— the meetings?” he asked.

“I mean— any of it.”

“I don’t think I thought how it would be,” he replied.

How would he ask her anything when he did not know what he wanted
to ask her? How seek an assurance when he did not know what he wanted
assured?

“I hope we’ll meet again,” he said.

“I reckon I’ll be back in the spring,” she said carelessly. She was looking
away over the prairies as she spoke; she was always looking over the
prairies. “We usually come to Median about twice a year, and I don’t
see any change ahead. We’re heading south now because Father can’t
preach up here in winter. Folks don’t get out once the blizzards begin.”

She seemed so careless, as though it did not matter to her where they
went, that he was terrified. He wanted to pull her gaze back to himself.

“I hope you’ll come back in the spring,” he said earnestly. “If you do,
Hi look forward to it all winter.”

“You want me to promise?”

Her black-lashed eyes fiashed to him, and their gaze upon him was so
warm that he was moved out of all prudence.

“Yes, I do,” he said.

“AH right, I promise,” she said. She smiled, then suddenly she put out
her hand arid touched him on the cheek with the palm of her hand, a touch
too light for a caress, and immediately she went away into the twilight.

And he stood there, by the touch upon his cheek her slave, and she
knew it. From what wisdom she had known that this young man would
be repelled by passion shown too soon she had not stopped to think. But
instinctively she had chosen the one right spell to put upon him, a touch
of flesh to flesh, sweet, fleeting, and not to be repeated, because she was

THE TOWNSMAN

125

going away. She liked this young man, so different in all ways from her
father, whom she half-despised, and different, too, from the unshaven
rough men she saw every day.

He looks clean, as if he bathed every day, she thought. She knew, he
did not, of course, bathe every day. Nobody could do that on the prairie
.where water was more precious than whisky. So.methiBg about Jonathan
made her th.mk of her mother. If he asks me to in.arry h,im next spri.iig, ,I
maybe will, she thought and, thus thinking, entered the tavern, gave a,
peculiarly brilliant smile to three strange men standing at the bar, and went
into the kitchen.

“Shan’t I help pee! potatoCvS?’’ she inquired of Mrs. Drear. ■

’Twould be a mighty, help,” Mrs. Drear said fervently. Judy tied an
apron about her waist and peeled .in .long .nimble curls of skin, ■

“Your paw s.atisfied enough to come back in the spring?” Mrs. Drear
asked. She was mixing com meal furiousiy with milk.

“I reckon,” Judy said dreamily.

His cheek had been as smooth as her own, she thought. She could' feel
it still on the palm of her hand. There was no reason ' why a man’s cheek
should not be smooth.

And yet the next day they did not once speak to each other, not so much
avoiding each other as knowing there was no more to be said. Winter
must come before spring.

Jonathan’s school was restored, and once more he began to teach. But
it had become a task. The taste for it had gone out of his mouth. He looked
at the children with deep doubt. A dirty ragged lot, he thought gloomily.
The Brewitt children from the river dugout wore sacks with holes cut out
for sleeves. What they had on beside was little, and already they shivered.
All of the children were barefoot, but then so was most of Median. But
hair was not combed and faces were not clean. Among them only Martha
and Matthew Cobb looked tended and washed.

“Everybody with a dirty face can take- time off to wash,” he ordered
suddenly. “That’s all of you Whites, and Sam and Abram Hasty and all
of Brewitts and Mary Anson and Jim Anson—the lot of you except the two
Cobbs. Cobbs -and Parrys are clean.”

- ■ He watched their astonishment with some. shame. He had never lost his
temper before with any of them, and it was not their fault if they were
dirty.' , , ,

“Reckon well -have to git watei' then from Drear’s well,” Sam Hasty
said. " "

“I ain’t goin’ to wash,” Abram said. He was- a tail strong boy with black
hair to Ms shoulders. At fourteen he was unwillingly beginning his letters.

“You will, Abram,” Jonathan said, ; He wished' that he had let them
be dirty, for after all it had nothing to do with their brains, and he had
seen their dirt to mind it so much only because he was full of his own

,126

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

gloom. Judy was gone. He had not told her good-by. He had simply let
her walk away on the last night withoot a word.

'^Eight dollars,” Joel had said sadly after he had counted collection.
reckon well have to preach our way south, Judy. God didn’t prosper me
much in Median, Mr. Goodiiffe.”

She had spoken for him quickly. “It depends on whether you’re countin’
souls or dollars, Mr. Goodliffe will be thinkin’, Pa.”

“That’s a cruel sharp thought of your own, Judy,” Joel retorted. “The
Lord knows He’s responsible for feedin’ His own. Who’s goin’ to feed me
if He don’t?”

She did not answer this, but she went away and as she went she gave
Jonathan a look, full of pleading for his mercy. And he gave her mercy
quick with comprehension. It was their only good-by.

She’s not like her father, he thought. She’s good and delicate—she is
innocent!

He had watched her walk away, her head bare and her bonnet in her
hand, and now winter stretched between them, an eternity.

“Sam, you and Abram take the two buckets and fill them,” he said
sharply.

Sam got on his feet and hesitated, glancing at his older brother.

“Sam ain’t goin’,” Abram said, and Sam sat down.

“Yes, he is,” Jonathan said, “inside of three minutes.”

What he would do in three minutes with this great boy he did not know,
and he had only three minutes. He had never been a fighter, nor had he
ever struck a pupil. He had been criticized for this. “No learnin’ without
the rod,” Mrs. Cobb had said to him one day.

“Folks say you’re too mild to be a teacher, Jonathan,” Lew Merridy
said to him at a Sunday dinner table.

“Everybody’s feared of Jonathan’s light-colored eyes, though,” Katie
had said.

“Afraid of my eyes!” Jonathan had repeated.

“They say you’ve got a queer eye,” she said.

“Why?”

“I dunno,” she answered. “It’s the way you drill into a body when you
look at ’em.”

He remembered this now, and he rose and slowly and steadily went
toward the big boy. Abram watched him sullenly out of his hair, like an
angry dog, until he stood near him.

“Abram,” Jonathan said, “I could fight you, but I won’t, because I can
do something else that’ll be easier for me. You’re going to fetch that water.”
He paused, then slowly began to recite the opening lines of Virgil, which
he had once learned by heart because of their music.

“Arma virumque cano—”

He chanted them slowly and clearly, his eyes never moving from that

THE TOWNSMAN

! 27 .

dark faccj until suddenly Abram howled and jumped up and leaped for the
door, and Sam after him. They snatched the two buckets as they went, and,
Jonathan, walked to the. blackboard' and put down twe:oty words.

‘‘Study these until they come back,” he said sternly. There was' no sound
of stir or whisper in the room. He waited a moment and then sat down,
by,. MS' table and opened the big Bible, it fell by magic to that Song, of
Solomon, and he read It, his heart aching for love.

,, “Let thy breasts be as c, lusters of the vine
And the smell of thy breath like apples,

\ And thy mouth like the best wine ...

^ That' goeth down. smoothly for my beloved.

Gliding through the lips of those that are asleep.”

God, speaking to His blessed bride, the Church, Joel had said when he
read aloud those words. But Jonathan knew better. They were the words of
a man to a woman,. He shut the book.-

The end of the autumn was come. The grass was red tmd then brown.
The wind stayed, and there was no cloud large enough, to hold in it the
hope of rain. Day went into day until the tenth day after Judy had gone.
It was night, and Beaumont wa.s there. He stored up in himself questions
and thoughts and wonders which he poured upon Jonathan at night; and
Jonathan, struggling to keep his wits clear in the swirl of Beaumont’s mind,
was stimulated and strengthened and always at last exhausted because he
knew he' was mot enough for this boy. 7.

Beaumont had grown fast in the last few months. He was taller than
Jonathan and much heavier, though without fat. He carried his w^eight in
the size of his skeleton, and yet his bones w^ere well shaped and even
graceful '''',

' ' “I wish you could go away to school,” Jonathan said. “In England you’d
be thinking of going up to a university.” '

“Would they let me, .in England?” Beaumont,; suddenly alert, lifted his
head.' ' .

“I reckon,” Jonathan said. “At least I never heard them say there they
let a man’s skin decide his brains.”-

They went outdoors as they talked. Whatever Beaumont would have said
next was not said. His head up, he sniffed the darkness. '

“I smell something,” Beaumont said.

128

AMERieAN TRIPTYCH

They Stood Still together, smelling the darkness.

'T can only smell the dusty dry grass, Jonathan said after a moment.

But Beaumont’s nostrils quivered in and out like a dog’s. 'T smell fire,”
he said.

And yet there was no fire to be seen. If it were' over the horizon, there
would be a glow against the sky. But there was no glow. The sky was
close down upon them, deep and soft and black.

“Nothing,” said Jonathan.

“Fire,” Beaumont repeated.

Then, while they waited, there was a quiver of wind out of the west.
It was scarcely more than a night breeze rearing out of the grass, except
that it carried the mild faint fragrance of smoke. It was no breeze, but
the first thrust of a very distant wind.

“Smoke!” Jonathan exclaimed.

The moment he said “smoke,” it seemed to him he could smell it He
had heard of fire upon the prairies; men talked of fire as they talked of
the wind and lightning and snow and all those forces which were their
enemies. He had listened to their stories when he clerked in the store.
Men sat upon barrels and leaned against the counters, spat and robbed
their noses and scratched their heads, and laughed ruefully.

“We-li, I declare, when I saw them flames farin’ round me I knowed
that I had to run like the gophers and the coyotes, and I loped along,
kickin’ ’em outa my way, On’y thing that kep’ ahead of me was the wild
horses, but soon I was areachin’ for their tails—”

He had listened, not knowing how much was truth and how much the
enormous lying which the prairies taught men to do. But there had been
the storm and the wind, larger than even they were able to lie; and he
knew inevitably that sometime he would have to fight fire, too— the fire
that began no one knew how and ended none knew where.

“Gotta tell folks,” Beaumont said. He began to run with long leaping
steps toward the tavern. Jonathan moved to run after him and then halted.
All he had was here in the sod house. It was his home and the one refuge he
had for his mother and the children. He thought a moment, remembering
what men had said they did against fire. The river people were safe. But
the sod house stood a mile away from the river. He had no beast to help
him haul water, and no water here except what he carried for his own
use from Drear’s well or collected in a barrel when it rained. But it had
not rained for many days. Once, they said, a woman had poured upon her
roof the milk she had saved to churn butter. But he had not even tasted
milk for months. All he had wherewith to fight fire was more fire, and
even as he thought of what men had said about this he saw other fires
lighting out of the darkness about the scattered houses of Median. Men
were setting the prairie on fire, and he went in and brought a stick of fire
out of the fireplace. The wind was growing moment by moment, and he
stood a second to catch its direction, that it might carry the fiames away

THE. TOWNSMAN

1,29

from the bouse. And as be stood be saw b.is garden full of yellow pumpkins.
He bad left them, to ripen continually one^day after a.o.olher, daring frost,
lo the comer of the .sod house be .had piled those' already ripe*

'“Soon’s I get onrs dried, III dry them for you, Jonathan,” Katie had
once said. “And Fli make them Indians he.lp.”

“Those,” Jonathan had said gently, but she had paid no attentio.o to
him.

While the grass burned he would gather the' rest of the pumpkins and
throw them inside t.he door. He stooped and, sheltering his face with his
hands, lit a blade of grass. It caught instantly, as dry as any dust, ■ and
then blade, lit blade a,s the wind .hurried, it. He stepped back, full of solemn
fear.. .It was a grave thing he had done—to set ire to the prairie. He looked
ac,ross Median for courage .and saw the other fires already. They were
blazing in circles about homes. Men 'were beati'Og them back when they
came too' close. He ran and lit one blaze after another in a huge circle
about the sod house, and then ran to his pumpkins and s.natclied them
from the, vines and rolled them into the door. His patch, of com .he had
plucked a week before, and there, was nothing but the stalks left, and yet
he bitterly regretted them because they were to have been, part of Ms win-
ter fuel. But he must let them go, for the fire he had 'started farthest from
the house was already too close. He rushed at it to stamp it out and flail
it out with an old broom. In a few minutes it was beyond him, and he
was terrified. Better to have let the wild fire bum him than the fire he had
set with his own hands, he thought. He leaped from one quickening flame
to another, but the fire seemed turned into a liquid to creep along under
the grass, red as blood until it burst out into flames, small but eluding
him everywhere. He began to sweat with heat and with fright, and then
suddenly he heard his name roared at him.

“Jonathan!” .

It was Henry Drear, carrying two great palls of water and around his
neck some old buffalo, hides.

“Jonathan, wet these and hang -’em over the windows and doors. Then
give over fighting thiS' bit of fire. It can’t damage the sod house. We got
to get out and do some burnin’. Real fire’s comin’—look at that sky!”

. Drear was already dipping the robes and packing them into the window
frames. “Got no time to waste, .Tonathan,” he said. “Any minute we’ll see
fire blazin’ there at the edge of the sky.”

Jonathan hong a long dripping hide into the open crack of the door and
closed it hard. Then he followed Drear, running with him toward the
west . Far out from Median fires were beginning to blaze. Everybody was
out lighting a huge circle of fire. He could see men on foot, on horseback,
bright for a moment against the blaze.

“Git as far as we can,” Drear panted. “The wind’s blowin* against us.”

They ran toward the burning sky until they saw the black horizon line
break into points of flame.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘‘All riglit!” Drear shouted. ‘‘We dassent go furderl”

They' stooped and. lighted the grass and with handfuls of blazing grass
for 'torches lit other grass, parting and ruiming in opposite directions until
In the broken darkness and light Jonathan was lost. But he went on blindly
lighting fire after fire until suddenly he was in the midst of a roar of fiames,
and choked with smoke. He stood up, and a jack rabbit ran between Ms
legs and nearly knocked him- down. He caught himself and then he saw
the big'fire was upon him, and he turned and ran from it He ran for the
only shelter he knew, the sod house. The sky was as bright as though, a
bloody SUE were lighting it, and in that hideous light he saw he was only
one of many animals. He did not stop, but he saw beside him a deer and
a fox; and ahead of Mm a small squat animal he did not know humped it-
self along upon its short legs; and prairie chickens half-ran, half-flew upon
the blackening grass; and birds rushed through the smoky air. But he
stopped for none of them. He was a fair runner, steady though not swift,
and Ms wind was good. He had need of good wind, for the air was hot
with smoke, and by the time he reached the sod house and jerked the
door open and closed it again he was gasping.

The air in the sod house was still good and cool, and he flung himself
on the floor to breathe for a moment. But not for more. In a very little
while the fire would be around him, and he must save the air he had.
He leaped to his feet again and looked for rugs, for paper, for anything
to stufl in the crevices of the windows and door. All he had was not
enough, and he seized upon a few sheets of paper he had given the cMl-
dren. Paper was precious, and only when a composition was perfect could
he allow them to have a sheet of paper to write it upon. Now he snatched
them up, crumpled them in his hand, and then saw that one of them was
Beaumont’s. The boy had written the story of a pet he had kept in a cage
and had freed at last because it became torture to him to hold it in a
cage. It was a strange little tale, half-childish and half-passionate. He
stopped and took out tMs paper from the others and put it back upon the
table.

Then for half the night he sat waiting for the fire to end. At first he
could not sit. He was compelled to move, to walk about, to do anything
except sit and wait. He had to fight continualiy a stupid compelling desire
to open the door and run. But he controlled this by cold reason. Run-
with ail the animals? The river was too shallow to hide him. Even if it
were not, would he drown or burn? No, the walls of the sod house were
thick, and earth could withstand fire, so he made himself calm. He lay
down upon his bed and thought how well it was that his mother was not
here nor the cMIdren, and how doomed by terror they would have been.
And Judy— he was glad now that she was gone. He thought of her as he had
seen her most, in the long hours when Joel was preaching. She never lis-
tened, so upon what did she brood in that deep musing out of which she
roused herself only to play the throbbing rhythms she put into hymns?

THE TOWNSMAN

IJI;

He was .afraid eve.n to tiiiak of her, test he sever see. her, aga.iQ» He
sat up, stiied with heat, and lit.' the candle on the ho.x beside his bed
which served as ,.a table, and took np his Virgil and began to read,." Yet ai.l
the time he read with only a part of his mind. If he lived would he ever
be able to cope with this huge willful country? Was it not too vast for a
man such as he, who loved his world small and clear and su.re? If he lived
to walk out of this house, should he not turn away from it forever and
go back to England and, by hook or crook, work his way to what he
knew?

He' felt the air of the room grow hotter and heavier with smoke. A
'huge deep roar was growing about him, a dry crackling growl that was
the voice of fire. He got up,' not able to, breathe, and dipped a towel into
his pail of d,rm'king water and bound it about his face and breathed
through it. But his lungs were stretched tight and ached. He stripped off
his shirt and sat half-naked, and the sweat streamed down his flesh, black
with smoke. He would die, he thought grimly. This would be his end, the
sod house about him like an oven.

When he was at the point of fainting with the heat and the smoke was
forcing its way into the house, suddenly he felt the fire pass over his head
and sweep on. He waited a few minutes. The air grew cooler. The hideous
growling roar was quieting. He made himself wait. When he could wait no
more and it seemed sure he would die without air, carefully he opened tlie
door. There was no light. He looked out into a pit of blackness. Sky and
earth were black. But the air was cooler and the silence was good. He
stood breathing. Only to breathe was enough. It was acrid air full of ash,
but it was air, and cool, and he took it into himself like drink and grew
strong. When he went back into the candlelight he was black. His hands
and his face were covered with grass soot, 'But he did not care. He left
the door open and threw himself upon his bed and slept.

None ca,me to wake him in the morning. Median slept— men, women,
and children— unwashed, unfed, but safe.

When it was late afternoon he waked and sat up in his bed. Everything
in the house was black. Bed, table, chairs, floor were covered with ash.
Upon the walls,' upO'ii every slight ledge, were layers of black ash. But the
air was clear and cold, and his lungs felt clean and sound again. He leaped
up and went to the door. The sky was blue, and the unshadowed sunshine
poured down upon a strange blackened land. As far as his eyes could
reach there was not a sign of life in all: the "dark, desert. The sod house,
upon the roof of which grass and weeds had grown, stood as black as an
oven; and Median was a few scattered black lumps. Over the tavern door
the sign had been burned away, and it hung down, a charred board or
two. The wooden ell to the store was gone. He saw no signs of any human
being. Yet if he was alive there would be others.

He had planned to go to the tavern first, but as he came to the store.

132

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

there at the door was Katie, her head m a cloth and her face a smudge.
She was sweeping furiously.

“Jonathan!” she screamed and waved her broom.

He stopped and she cried, “Soon as I finish here, Fll come and clean
you up, Jonathan!”

“What are you cleaning with?” he asked.

She was sweeping out piles of blackness.

“Dirt,” she said cheerfully. “Dirt cures dirt. Water’s no good against,
this soot. You want to sprinkle everything good with dry dirt so’s nothing
can fiiy and sweep it all out together.”

She looked so cheerful that he laughed.

“What* s the matter?” she inquired. She never saw any cause for laughter.

“Oh, you,” he replied.

“Why, what’s the matter with me?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She was so ugly, and so careless of her ugliness, that he felt an affection
for her and, reaching for her ear, he pulled it.

“You’re a good girl,” he said and went on to the tavern, marveling
that the world could contain two female creatures so different as Katie and
Judy.

Katie was bawling something after him and he stopped to hear her.

“Ifli be winter now,” she was saying. “That fire burned up the fall!”

The wickedness of the fire was that it had taken all the fuel for winter.
There was nothing more to bum upon the prairies.

In the schoolroom the children sat bundled in all their own garments
and old coats and skirts of tireir parents. The Indian children were the
most comfortable, for they were wrapped in blankets; and the Negro
children were the most miserable, and they looked gray with cold.

The winter grew deep. It became the occupation of Jonathan’s life to
find fuel for Ms school. On days when there was no school he borrowed
Henry Drear’s wagon and horses and drove for miles beyond the barren-
ness the fire had left. When he found long grass again, he pulled it up and
pressed it into the wagon. He walked along the river and caught at
branches and roots wMch the water had tom out of soft banks. In the
evenings when he sat alone he took the grass he had cut in the daytime
and twisted it into cats and stacked them against the end walls. In the

THE, TOWNSMAN ' ' . 133

tavern there was a hay-biirBing stove; aad, after seeing it, lonathao: bought
a tin washtub at the store and took it to Stephen Parry.

”Ciit me a top to this, if you please, Mr. Parry, and set in a stovepipe,
at the sid.e.^’

''^You fixitf a hay burner?*’ Stephen inquired...

,**Thafs so,” Jonatha.n replied.

Stephen Parry brought it the next day and set it up in. one side of the
.big sod fi.replace. Wh.€,n it was .full of the hay cats, it could burn for a.in
hour.

But before Christmas Jonathan saw that there must be help if he were
to keep the children warm. He spent a Sunday- going from house to house
to tell the parents.

ca.s’t teach and keep them, warm together,” he, said over and over
again. takes a -man’s time to fetch fuel and keep the :fi.re goi.iig. Since
the school’s a public co.ncem, in a way, I thought you might help.”

“Surely we will,” one man said and another.

Before Christm.a.s Day,. .Jonathan had half his bedroom stacked with
fuel, with hay cats and cornstalks and bundled weeds and sun.flower stalks,
carted from beyond the fire area. He even accepted the cow chips which
the Indians brought by the basketload.

“Sun and wind has cleaned ’em good,” Bill White said.

“Fm glad even for dung,” Jonathan said.

He thought of Ms mother when he spoke and, as he always did, suf-
fered for an instant a pinch of dulled pain. Since winter had begun and
the movement West was stopped, he felt as cut off from her as though by
an ocean. But if she were alive, she would send him something for
Christmas.

And he did not need her as much as he once had. Other lesser securities
were growing up in him. Thus the store of fuel in his room was a small
security, not merely for its own sake, but because the people of Median
had come to his help and put it there. He felt them united about him in a
friendlmess—not intimate, yet solid. Lying in his bed sometimes in the
straight, still way which was his, he thought of them, one by one. Cotton-
wood was from the Bentley’s down in the river dugout, and Cobbs brought
hay cats, and from somewhere Parrys had brought cornstalks. Stephen
must have traded them for labor somehow. And Hastys had brought straw
twists -from 'the mil! refuse. Poor Abram Hasty would never get beyond
the second reader, however long he stayed, and perhaps it was only fair
to tell-. Ms father. Then he remembered something. Last night Beaumont
had said ..he wanted to^ be^ a surgeon,

“A surgeon!” Jonathan had exclaimed. He looked at Beaumont’s hands,
olive-skinned, the fingers long and square at the tips. ‘T never thought of you
wanting to be that,” he said. “Where did you ever hear of surgeons?”

“My grandfather Beaumont’s a surgeon,” the boy answered, and in the
proud look he gave Jonathan he was suddenly as alien to Sue as though

134

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

her blood bad forsakan him. For the moment at! Ms white blood took
'comin,aiid. • ■ ■

“That glYes me a notion,” Jonathan said, thinking. ''Yon say your grand-
fathefs living?”

/‘He’s a very old man,” Beaumont replied. “But I know he’s alive. My
mother has ways of knowing. If he was to die she says, she would know.”

“Where does he live?” Jonathan asked.

“In New Orleans,” Beaumont said. “Pierre Beaumont’s his name, and
Pierre is my first name, too. I took it for myself, when I found out who
I was.”

Excitement sounded in his voice and shone in his eyes, and Jonathan,
feeling it, retreated to prudence. The boy was always too eager.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “Til have to think a while.”

“Yes, sir.” Beaumont’s face shadowed quickly. He was hurt, and yet
what could Jonathan promise? The boy was sensitively ready to hope at a
straw, and as quick to retreat if the hope were delayed an instant. Without
another word he went off into the winter twilight.

Thinking it over now slowly and carefully, Jonathan came to a deter-
mination to write to Pierre Beaumont in New Orleans without saying any-
thing to Sue or Stephen Parry. SometMng must be done with this glorious
boy, and what was there in Median?

This morning was the Sunday before Christmas, and when Jonathan
had washed himself and eaten, he put on his stock and coat and sat down
dose by a small fire to write the letter to Pierre Beaumont.

“Honored Sir,” he wrote in Ms clear colorless handwriting, “I take up
my pen to address you upon a matter Personal to yourself. I am a School-
master, and in my School I have as a pupil a youth whose name is Pierre
Beaumont.”

He wrote carefully and baldly in the literal plain way that was natural
to him and made his request.

“It seems to me, therefore, Sir, that the Instincts of Nature and Virtue
will move you to educate this unusual Youth in whose Veins is your own
Blood and who bears your Name.”

He signed Ms name and after it wrote “Schoolmaster.” Folding the
sheet, he sealed it with wax and superscribed it “Doctor Pierre Beaumont,
New Orleans, State of Louisiana, in the United States of America”; and
took the letter with him to Lew Merridy’s when he went to dinner, Tlie
mail went once a week from the store, on Monday or Tuesday, except
in storm.

On tMs day, as he walked across the black, frozen ground, he felt a
new and vicious bitterness in the wind. Lew came to open the door for

Mm.,'.' ■"

“Takes a man to hold the door against this wind,” Lew said. “Come in,
Jonathan. I don’t know as you’ll get back today. It’s fixin’ to come a
blizzard”

THE TOWNSMAN

135

They , walked together across^^ the store, anheated because it was Soil-
day. early for blizzards,” ■ Lew said. ^*Mostly we gel *em after
Christmas.”

The wind forciag itself' uader the door, caught at. their ankles. But when
th.ey went i,nto the back rooms they were full of co,m,fort. Lew^ had old
boxes and kegs to bum, :an.d sometimes farmers brought him hay cats and
corncobs kstead of cash for goods. Katie was throwing cobs into, the
stove .now, and the roo.m was roaring warm.

.'*Weli, Jonathan,” she said. She never called him hy Ms name in school,
.but outside of school hours she .maintained an equality with him. *‘Sit here,”
s.h.e co.fnman.ded him, •‘"'a.nd put up your feet to the fire.” She po.lled a stool
to a chair.

He sat dowm. obediently. Now that he was. in the warm,th, he kB,ew he
had been very cold M the sod house. But it seemed, not right, to use for
himself the fuel pare,Qts .had b.rou.ght for their children. He drew., out his
letter from his 'brea.st pocket.

^^See that this letter gets stamped when the mail comes by, will you,
Katie?” he asked.

She took it and spelled out the name. ‘‘Who’s this Pierre Beaumont?”
she demanded.

“Oh, Fil tell you one of these days,” he said to tease her, knowing he
would never tell her. “Mind you mail it, Katie.”

“Katie’ii mad it,” Lew said, spitting carefully into a tin can full of
ashes near the stove. “She tends mail now reg’iar and takes a hand in the
store Satidays. She’s gettin’ so she earns her salt.”

“Store work’s easy,” Katie said. She threw a look at Jonathan as she
spoke, and he smiled, aware of her longing for praise and touched by it.
He smiled at her, and then he thought of Judy and looked away from her.

By midaftemoon, when they had finished dinner and the dishes were
washed, it was evident that the blizzard was . come. .

“You’Ii stay with us, Jonathan,” Lew said.

“But there’s school tomorrow,” Jonathan demurred.

“There’ll be no school this side of Christmas, with a wind like this,”
Lew, said.

In an hour he saw that Lew was right again. The wind had risen, and
the house shook in its blasts,, and the sky was already dark with snow. By
three o’clock Jonathan, peering out of a w^indow, saw only his own face
staring back at him into the lamplight. He ought to be at home, he thought.

, “Reckon I ought to get back, though,” he .told. Lew. . ,

“Why?” Lew retorted. “You ain’t got a beast or a human there waitin’
for you.” ' '

It was true, he had not. There was no reason why he should go back to
the sod house, except that in some vague way it had become home, since
he had no other, and he wanted to be at.' home.

“You’d never find your way there, Jonathan,” Lew said. “Why, in a

136

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

bli2zard a man . can get lost -.and . froze to death between his house and his
barn. Stay here with us. We’d admire to have you."”

: “Reckon I must then, thanks,*’ Jonathan said after a moment, still un-
willingiy— though, when he thought of it, he could not tell why he should
be unwilling. There was indeed no living creature, waiting for him any-
where. He was struck with sudden loneliness, and, he turned away from
the window to the' warn room and the light and fire and to the sight
of Katie, tying bibs around the necks of two small boys sitting in little
high chairs Lew had built out of barrels.

“Stop your racket, you two,” she said loudly, and then kissed them,
,, She looked practical, sure of herself, sound in all her habits. He said,
“You’re a rare good girl, Katie.”

She looked up at him with a shyness so strange upon her sallow plain
features that he was moved by it,

“I mean it,” he said.

For once she had nothing to say. She hesitated a moment, her cheeks
reddening, and then suddenly she turned and ran out of the room.

in the roar of the storm that night he and Lew sat alone by the stove.
Mrs. Merridy had gone to bed early.

“I might as well sleep if you’re settin’ up, Lew,” she said. “You can let
me know if the house blows away.”

“ni tell ye,” he replied dryly.

Then Katie got up.

“You gom’ too?” Lew inquired.

She nodded.

“You’re mighty quiet,” he said. “Ain’t sick, be you?”

“No, Pa,” she replied.

“Never knowed you to be quiet before,” he said.

“A body can be quiet sometimes,” she said.

“Oh, shore, if it’s natural,” he said, staring at her with doubt.

And then in the stillness of the warm room, in the midst of the shrieking
wind, he lit his pipe and smoked. “A man takes thou^t out in these here
prairies, Jonathan, when he’s settin’ in the middle of a storm,” he said after
a while. " ■ ■

“Ah, he does,” Jonathan agreed.

“He takes thought for them as he’s brought into the world,” Lew said
mournfully.

Jonathan did not answer, having no idea of what was in Lew’s mind.
But it was his habit to wait.

“A man,” Lew said, raising his voice, “says to himself, how will he
pervide for his children, especially the females? A female has a sorry
chance in this life, Jonathan. Bound to be dependent on some man or other,
and it’s all luck what she gets. She has to take her pick of what’s before
her at best, and a girl like Katie has to take her pick of what wants her.”

Still Jonathan did not see what was behind Lew’s graying moustache

THE' TOWNSMAN 137

and bushy eyebrows. But he became aware of embarrassnieot in Lew’s
look. ,

/I .daresay^” he said, wondering.

‘‘Katie’ll make a wonderful wife,” Lew said, ‘‘but it’ll have to 'be for a
man wise enough to see behind her face*”

Jonathan did not speak. Prudence began to stir in him. '

“Hell,” Lew said suddenly and. smacked hk knee, ‘‘it’d be a Goda-
mighty relief to me, Jonathan, if you was that wise man.”

Jonathan felt his body grow stiS as he sat. He could not have spoken
if, he had known how to speak what he knew. He was fond of this big
slatternly man, fond, too,. of Mrs. Merridy with' all her a.cM, and .fond of
this home where he was always 'welcomed. But he knew he could not
marry Katie.

“She’s .like a good fierce faithful bitch dog,”. Lew said. He did. .not look
at Jonathan. He filled his pipe, picked a coal out of the ashes under' the
stove and lit It. “Shell stick to a man as fierce and faithful, and she’.ll
have younguns and keep ’em clean, and teach ’em to fight fair and. tell
no lies, and she’s a good cook and savin’. A man.’ll be lucky if he can see
what Katie is.” '

Jonathan, cleared his throat. “I’m sure that’s ail true, Mr. .Merridy,” he
said. His voice sounded thin. The roar of the blood in his ears was stronger
than the wind wrenching at the windows. Lew waited, but Jonathan could
not say more, and this penetrated into Lew’s mind at last. He drew a few
long breaths of smoke and then knocked the ash from his pipe*

“Don’t you mind my sayin’ it, Jonathan,” he said.

“I do mind, though,” Jonathan replied. “I mind it terrible, for I’m—
Fm fond of you,, sir— ”

“Call me Lew, like anybody else,” Lew' broke in.

“Yes, sir,” Jonathan said, sweating, “i will, thank you— and I’m fond
of Katie, but I am not free— in a manner, that is—” He stopped.

“Why, I never see you lookin’ -at nobody!” Lew excla.imed.

“But Fm— in love,” Jonathan confessed.

Lew stared at him, and his blue eyes grew solemn..

“Then I’m sorry I spoke,” he said, “Ishoul,dn’t have spoke if Fd dreamed
it. But I didn’t And Katie’s fond of you. She’s terrible food of you. It’s
seek’ that put It k my mind to speak. She can’t coax and tease and drawr
a man' like some girls can. She can’t p’kt to herself— somebuddy has to do
it for her, and since you and me is good friends, why, I says to myself, I
can speak for my own child. It’s gok’ to be hard on her.”

“Does she know you were going to : speak?” Jonathan asked.

“No, but I gotta teM her, Jonathan, that she mustn’t think about you,”

Jonathan’s head began to hum. “She’s just a child,” he murmured,

“Fifteen ak’t a child for a girl here,” Lew said. “A girl hereabouts
marries any time after she’s sixteen.”

138

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He got Up md took the lamp and went to the window. In the light
the furious snow seemed stabbing at them with- darts.

fee! I oughtn’t to, stay here,” Jonathan said miserably. ‘'I fee! I ought
to get right out of your house.”

**You can’t,” Lew said. ^‘Besides, I wouldn’t let you. What Fve said is
to be fergot. I’ll be downright mad with you if you don’t fergit it. Now
let’s go to bed. Think you can sleep on that sofy?”

■‘Yes, of course,” Jonathan said. He stood up involuntarily as Lew went
to the door.

“Well, so long till mornin’, and we have to dig ourselves out,” Lew said
over his shoulder. “You’ll fix the fire?”

“I will,” Jonathan replied.

Alone, he tended the fire and banked it with ash, and then he lay down
on the narrow sofa and drew a buffalo hide over him. Katie had brought
it in and left it there for him. He lay under it warm and comfortable if he
did not turn, but he could not sleep. He was thinking of Katie while all
his being steadily refused her.

I couldn’t have spoken other than I did, he thought solemnly, with sor-
row for his own ingratitude. How willful was love that it denied itself
to one who deserved it and poured itself out upon another who did nothing
excqjt to look as Judy looked, to walk and smile and talk as she did! He
was sorry that it was so, but there was no cure for it. And in the same
mood of destiny and fate he thought, I’ve engaged myself to Judy tonight,
though she doesn’t know it I’m promised to her.

He lay awake and trembling in the midst of the clatter of the storm
and did not notice it, until long after midnight he perceived it had ended.
He rose and lit the lamp and saw that the silence was because the snow
was deeper than the windows, and so the wind was no longer to be heard.
He was buried in this house.

In the small dugout which Clyde had made against a hill in the middle
of his acres, Mary, lying back upon her pillow wrapped in a bit of old
gray blanket, looked at her child just bom. Then she looked at Ruth, who
stood hesitating beside the bed. It was indecent that Ruth, her own daugh-
ter and still a child herself, had had to help her. But the baby had come too
soon. Clyde was away, and there had been no one else. She was only
grateful that Jamie was hired to a man for herding sheep on the foothills.
She looked at Ruth with miserable and apologetic eyes.

THE TOWNSMAN

“Fm so.!Ty to the heart,” she said weakly. dose you a wroii,g,
Ruthie.”

“Oh, no, Mother,” Ruth said quickly. But she would never forget,, never;
and Mary saw it in her sick averted eyes.

“Don’t let it turn you,” she said pleadingly. “After all, It’s naturai-a
thing women must endure in one way or another; only not you, pray God,
like this.” " * :

Ruth did not answer. She could not, for she was ashamed that her mother
had seen what she was tiiinking.

“Shan’t I fetch you some tea, Mother?” she asked.

“Fd be grateful,” her mother said faintly. The tiny creature on her arm
was barely alive. She looked again at its little curled shape. “Oh, my poor
wee!” she muttered, and closed her eyes.

But Ruth said nothing. When she had brought in the cup of tea and
had lifted her mother’s head with her hand so that she could sip It, she went
out to loose the rope with which she had tied Maggie to a scrub tree to'
keep her from running away while she tended her mother. Maggie had
cried in great roars and then wailed herself to sleep. She lay now in the
short browm upland grass, her face muddy and her sunburned red hair full
of bits of grass and earth.

Ruth stooped and lifted her, but the stout child was heavy for her in her
sleep, and so she sat down on the ground and cradled her head on her
knees. It was too cold to stay long, though the day was lodian summer.

She shook Maggie gently. “Maggie, wake up!” she said. “It’s getdn’
cold.” She rose and dragged the little girl to her feet, and they went Into
the house.

“Ruth!” Her mother’s voice from the bed was suddenly alert.

“Yes, Mother?”

“Don’t tell Jonathan anything. Have you written him?”

“Not yet.”

“Then leave it to me to tell. He’ll be disgiisted-like with your father.”

“AH right, Mother.”

She w^ent on cleaning Maggie and picking the bits out of her hair, and
then she fed her with corn-meal mush and put her to bed.

But Mary did not write to Jonathan even when she got up. She could
not. How could a middle-aged woman explain to a young man, sensitive
and fastidious and her son, why she went on bearing children against her
will? So she told herself she was too tired.

She scarcely put the little thing out of her arms. Everything else was
neglected. She let Ruth manage as she could, and day and night she lay
upon the bed or sat up against a pillow holding the scrap of a child to
her body to keep It warm. Clyde grew impatient.

“You act like it was all you had,” he grumbled.

She did not answer. She ignored him unless at night she felt him press

140

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

against her. Then she whispered fiercely, ‘‘Yon keep to yourself, Clyde!
Fve enough on my conscience with this wee sorrowful child.'’

‘‘Oh, you’re always thinkin’ of one dinged thing when I come around,”
he retorted. “And it’s the last thing I want of you when you’re like this.”

“Stay away, then,” she said. “Children are wickedness in a hole like
this.” .

She kept her voice to a whisper because of the indecency of all their
life having to go on in this one room.

They were living like beasts in a den. She had no furniture. Her bed
was a mattress on posts driven into the ground and crossed with slats. The
children slept on pallets spread on dried grass. And the last beastliness
was to give birth to a child in this hole-she, a decent Englishwoman! She
remembered the cottage in Dentwater and how nice her kitchen had been
and how shining were her bits of copper and brass and what a good win-
dow it had for a plant or two.

I don’t have anything good to write to Jonathan, so I’ll not write, she
thought.

Her strength did not come back, and at last she did not rise from the
bed. The child grew weaker with her W’^eakness, and on Christmas Day it
died in her arms. Upon the bed she turned to Ruth.

“The little thing’s gone,” she said. She had told herself ever since its
birth that it would be better if this little creature did not live, and yet she
had thought of nothing except how to make it live. Scarcely mine it
seemed all the time it was livin’, she thought. But now it’s dead, I know it
was mine.

“Oh, Mother, and we didn’t even name it!” Ruth cried and burst into
weeping.

“We’ll call her after me,” Mary said.

She covered her dead child and waited until evening when Maggie was
asleep, and then with Ruth’s help she washed it carefully and put on the
little christening robe she had saved and brought with her from Dentwater
because all the children had worn it. And then, because there would be
nothing better, she told Ruth to bring one of the goods boxes they used
for stools, and she laid the gray blanket in it and then the child. All the
time Ruth wept silently.

“Don’t weep, my dear,” her mother said sadly. “How could we want
her back into this place? But I wish she could have been christened, some-
how. It’s like the animals, else.”

“Oh, Mother, don’t!” Ruth wailed.

She flung herself upon the bed, and Clyde came in and found them

S0.

“What’s the to-do?” he began, and then saw the little figure in the box
like a doll in its long white dress, and he stood still, and his face altered.
“Why, when did It happen like this?” he said.

THE TOWNSMAN

141 .

“This afternoon/! Mary^ answered.. Her face quwered.* “Oh., Clyde, it
was bound to come!” -

“I reckon it was,” .he said slowly.

He. stood a, moment, then asked, timidly, humbly, “Whaf.ll I do, .Miary?”

Take it over to that little hollow, CIyd.e~~you .know, the onC' I always
called the Fold. And, oh, Clyde, put a stone, on top— again,st the coyotes.”
“Sure— I would have— ” he said.'

He, searched and found some planks a.od was about to nail them down,
when he paused,

, “What is it?” Mary whispered.

“This bit of gray blanket, Mary— s,he don’t need it a,nd' we will.”

Mary’s eyes burned at Mm. “Clyde, you leave that on her!”

“But, Mary-”

“It’s all she has— that miserable bit of stuff— no proper coffin, no buriai— ”

“All right, Mary! Godamighty, I just was thinkin’ of the livin’ instead of
the dead!” ■

“1 k.now— ” She began to cry, a,nd he came over to .her and sat down
beside her.

“Mary, my dear—”

She could not stop crying, and after a while he sighed and gave her
up and went to the door, the box under his arm. Then she called to him
and he stopped. “What is it, Mary?”

“Clyde, don’t put her away without saying sometliing.”

“Fll say the Lord’s Prayer,” he said in a low voice.

When he was gone, she lay quiet on the bed. At last she could rest, if
this feeling of weakness and loss could be rest. She had no strength. The
child’s birth had taken what she had left. An unwanted birth was a deadly
thing for a woman to endure. It tore the strength out of body and will.
She lay, too tired to weep, now that Clyde was gone.

And then in the stillness, with only Ruth sobbing softly, she thought
of Jonathan, She had not written and she would not write. There was no
use in telling him anything at all.

Twould only be to his distress. At least I can be spared that, she thought.

Thus Christmas had brought no letter from Jonathan’s mother or Ruth.
For three days Jonathan had stayed in Lew’s house. Lew had taken ad-
vantage of a moment alone with Jonathan to say, “I ain’t goin’ to hint
nothin’ to Katie till you kin go home.”

“I fee! that badly I don’t know how to express myself,” Jonathan said
sorrowfuHy.

“You needn’t,” Lew said. “You cam’t help it I know how ’tis. I picked
my own wife without knowin’ why. Lotsa prettier girls, iolsa girls more
fun; but I had to have only her. Craziest thing! I sit an’ think about it
sometimes.”

On Christmas Eve they tunneled through to the main road and there

142 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

foimd a great patch of bare biack ground. The blizzard had freakishly
heaped up snow in drifts twenty feet deep, but to do it the wind had
scooped an acre bare. Over barren ground Jonathan walked to wallow
again through shallow drifts and dig through deep ones until he stood once
more in the sod house. Everything was as he had left it. The air was damp
and icy cold, but he was glad to be there. He was home again. He was
even glad he had refused Lew’s invitation to stay to Christmas dinner.
He had brought food along, crackers and corn meal and dried peaches, and
he would rather eat here alone. In Lew’s home he had felt ashamed even
to think of Judy. Here he could summon her as he would, sit at his table
and remember her, lie on his bed and dream of her, read his few books
and see her in every line of poetry and every picturing word. He had
written to her three times, but she had not answered. He suspected, half*
tenderly, that she could not write, and she would be too delicate to give
another her thoughts of him. Ah, web, I’m a master at waiting, he thought.

But he was not alone on Christmas Day after all, Henry Drear
came roaring through the snow to the sod-house door and beat upon it so
hard that the top of the tunnel caved in upon him. When Jonathan opened
the door, in fell man and snow until it seemed the room was half-full
of both.

^‘Of all the darned ways to treat a man on Christmas morning!” Henry
shouted. “And me come to ask you to drink my hot buttered rum!”

Jonathan grinned. “You’ve made a fair mess here,” he said in his calm
voice and reached for the shovel and began to ladle out the snow.

“It’s your snow,” Henry returned, “and all I did was to bring it in with
me. Well, Jonathan, come along at noon or so and drink with Median
folks at American House.”

“Thanks, I will,” Jonathan replied, “though Tm no great drinker, as
you know.”

“Oh, well, you’re schoolmaster and folks’ll want you there.”

“And I want it, too,” Jonathan said.

“Good,” Henry shouted. To shout was his only voice, and everything
he said was a bellow. He clapped Jonathan’s shoulder. “Come along out
and help clear the roads— we’re all at it”

“I will,” Jonathan said.

He spent Christmas morning shoveling snow as dry and crystalline as
salt. But he enjoyed it. He saw men he had not seen since Joel’s meeting,
and in the brilliant sunshine they stopped to talk and compare this blizzard
with blizzards of other years. It was easy, neighborly talk, and full of the
boasting to which he was now used, though he could never take part in it.

“This-here blizzard,” Bill White said, spitting a great stain upon the
snow, “ain’t nothing like the blizzards we used to have when I first come to
the prairie. Them was blizzards! First the snow would all come down. Then
the wind would toss it ail up and stir it round until it made you dizzy did
you look out of the window. And if you opened the door you never got

THE ' TOWNSMAN

143

It shut again. I've' knowed folks whose doors busted open and they froze
solid in their beds and was excavated in the spring!”

^'This is enough of a blizzard for me, thoo^, Mr. 'Virile,” Jonathan said
mildly,

“You have to get used to big things out here,” Bill said.

They spent Christmas afternoon at the tavern. Everybody in Median was
there except the Parrys. Now that he saw them all merrymaking, It oc-
curred to him how youthful Median was. There were few white heads.
Mrs. Cobb’s mother was there and an old man he had not 'seen before,
but. most of Median was young. There was singing and dancing, and he
saw Katie dancing again and again. There were no other young giiis in
Median since Jennet went away, and Katie shone -in a solitary glory which,
if it could not be splendid because of her plain face and dun-colored hair,
was nevertheless real. She was young, less than a woman but more than a
child, and men danced with her half-teasingly, half-provocatively, and she
went from one to the other with a sedate industrious mergy. She did not
once look at Jonathan.

Ah, she knows! he thought and was at once relieved and foolishly hurt.
He was fond of Katie. Sometime when he could he must tell her how a
chap could be fond of one girl even when he was in love with another.
But he did not go near her. He danced a little with Mrs. Drear, who told
him she had heard from Jennet. She was in San Francisco and hoping to
be married to a rich man. There were plenty of rich men there.

“Have you heard from your folks?” she asked.

“No, but ril hear as soon as the roads open,” he replied.

“Sure you will,” she said and laughed, “There, Jonathan, leave me be.
Fm breathless and too old for a young feller.”

He let her go and stood watching the crowd. Tired of dancing, they had
suddenly begun to sing, and when they sang they were most themselves.
Each dropped unaware into what he was. And Jonathan, who had only
once yielded to one of Joel’s hymns, was suddenly moved, and he lifted
his voice shyly and began to sing, too. But he would never be able to sing
himself out in Henry Drear’s rollicking roar, and he could only sip his hot
buttered rum instead of swallowing it down in big gulps. The scum of
butter was too rich for him, and after a moment he put his mug down.

Yet all was good, and he liked being there. They liked him, and he felt
this. He was deeply pleased when Mrs. Cobb came up to him and said
in her plain way, “I want to tell you, Mr. GoodliSe, that it’s been real
worth while stoppin’ in Median. The children both read wonderful.”

“Fm glad of that, Mrs. Cobb,” he said earnestly.

“And Fm just as pleased that Martha’s a mite smarter than Matthew,”
she said. “I tell her, too. I aim to have my girls hold their heads as high as
any mao.”

“Why not?” he agreed, though privately he did not. A woman ought
not to be quite as smart as a mao. Even with all his feelings against his

144

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

father, he would have loved his mother less if she had not been subject
to him. “Though I have a very, high opinion of Matthew,” he said, “He
is very able in mathematics.”

Mrs. Cobb looked proud. “So he ought to be, for he has the skinflintest
grandfather in the state of Massachusetts, Old Mr, Cobb’s a real rich man,
but it don’t do anybody any good, because he hoards it all. That’s why
we left the store and come West.”

“Is it now!” Jonathan said politely.

What touched him most that Christmas Day was to go home at dusk
and find upon his table a small bundle tied in newspaper dyed red with
something and secured with string made of woven grass. “Merry Christmas
from Parrys” was written upon a piece of paper in Beaumont’s best hand,
and a branch of berries was thrust under the string. Inside the package
were molasses candy and dried wild raspberries and some black walnut
meats in a little wooden box made very light and thin and polished until
it was like porcelain to his touch.

He lit a small fixe and sat near it and ate some of the candy and nuts
and thought of his mother and the children and Judy. Then, to his own
amazement, he thought a little of Katie. He discovered that he was hurt
because she had let this day go by without a mention of something he
knew she had long been making for him. He suspected it was a shirt
because more than a month before this she had brought a piece of string to
school and measured his arm and the breadth of his shoulder and chest.

“Don’t you ast me nothin’, Jonathan,” she had said importantly. “You’ll
know sometime— Christmas, maybe.”

But this was the end of Christmas, and she had not spoken to him. He
felt foolishly irritated with himself that he cared. Fm an unreasonable
chap, he thought, after some pondering, and was much surprised at himself.

On the ragged northern fringe of the city of New Orleans, Judy stood
in a crowd and watched its behavior. It was a crowd mostly of men, but
this did not trouble her. Crowds were usually made up of men because
most women stayed at home. If she had a home, maybe she would stay in
it. When she thought of this she thought vaguely of Jonathan without decid-
ing anything. Her wandering life had made her able to live only in the
moment.

Around the jail between two and three hundred men stood stolidly wait-
ing for something. She knew what it was, because she had asked. She bad

THE TOWNSMAN'

145

come out of the boardmghoose where she an.d Joel, had, rooms, aaci with a
basket on, her arm she was going to the market to buy food. Across,, the
street down which she went, every day, she found the dense ma.ss.of men,,
and she, paused.

^‘What are you here for?^’ , she asked a young man in a drab brown
suit and a tall hat.

*Xem Beaumont’s to be taken from jail to court .today,” he replied.

..When she heard that, she gave up the marketing. She could do that,
any time, but she could not see any time this big Negro who had killed
old Pierre Beaumoof s son, Pierre. She had heard all about it because every-
body was talking about it. Nobody cared whether young Pierre died or
not. He was the worthless son of a good father. But he w^as a white man,
and Lem was the' son of a black mother, a m.u!atto who .had once been a
Beaumont slave. People said young Pierre was his father, but Lem*s real
sin was not patricide. It was that a black man had killed a white man—aod,
more than that, a white man to whom he would have belonged legally if
the war had not turned the wrong way.

The crowd was quiet. Had they been noisy she would not have been
afraid of them. She was used to men in excitement, and it did not matter
much what the excitement was. But these men were perfectly still, their
faces turned attentively to the door of the jail. A man spat, another tore
a bite from a plug of tobacco and put the plug back into his pocket. But
these slight movements scarcely broke the rigidity of the mass.

A fat elderly man in a dirty linen suit stared at Judy. When she looked
up, her eyes drawn unconsciously by his, he said, ** You’d better go on
where you were goin’. What’s about to happen is for us men to see—”
don’t mind,” Judy replied. She gave him a look from her eyes, so
purposely pure and fearless that he was disconcerted and moved away from
her.' , ,, .

Under the quietness something waited. It stirred when the door opened
and the sheriff came out. He was a tall, ia2y4ooking man, and he surveyed
the crowd with tolerant eyes. When he spoke it was with a sort of slow
and genial power.

‘‘Lookahyeah, you-all oughtn’t to act like this. The co’se of justice is
proceedin’. They ain’t a mite of doubt Lem’s gonna be hung. Fm willin’ to
give my pehsonal wuhd of honah.”

The men stared back at him in sflence and stillness. He spat and, taking
off his broad-brimmed hat, scratched his head.

“WeU, I ain’t responsible,” he muttered, and he turned and went back
into the jail.

Now little movements were to be felt rather than seen. Men shuffled
their feet in the dust, men tightened their belts, men drew their hands across
their mouths and pulled down their hats over their eyes and waited.

■ The door opened, and the came out again. Behind him were two

146

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

guards and between the guards was a big Negro with mud-coiored wool
and slaty eyes. ■

The crowd, like an animal long crouched and waiting, leaped forward.
Judy, behind them, saw them spring, fasten upon their prey, and move
away with him. The silence was broken with moans and mutterings, and
then suddenly with the Negro’s yelps. She stood motionless, watching them
go. Across the emptiness between her and the doorway to the jail she saw
the sheriff and the guards. They did not look at her, but she heard their
voices clearly through the sunshine.

''Reckon old Doc Beaumont’ll be mighty mad with me,” the sheriff said.

"He shorely will,” a guard agreed.

"Seems like they just couldn’t stand it when they heard old Doc dido’
want the State to prosecute. It made ’em mad.”

"It shore ain’t healthy in this here town not to prosecute a niggra to
the full extent of his crime,” the guard agreed.

The sheriff turned to spit and, seeing Judy, paused to smile; and she, at
the familiar sight of that sort of smile on a man’s lazy, handsome face,
recalled her errand and went on her way thoughtfully.

Beaumont! There was a handsome boy in Jonathan’s school called
Beaumont. When spring came, if they went back to Median, if it happened
that she and Jonathan met again, she would tell him about this morning.
She felt sobered by what must now be happening to that gray-skinned
Negro with Ms wrong-colored eyes, but she was not shocked. Such things
had to happen. Even the sheriff could not stop them. There was something
like the will of God in them. Everything was God’s will, and there was
nothing to do about it. If she got back to Median, if she married Jonathan
and obeyed her mother, that would be God’s will. But if she did not, that
would be God’s will, too.

She bought beans and com and some greens and a piece of cow’s meat
and stai*ed at some bright red fruit

"What’s those?” she asked the slatternly white woman who served her.

"Them’s love apples,” the woman said.

"Are they good to eat?” Judy asked.

"Some folks says they’re pison, and some folks eats ’em,” the woman
replied. "I dunno, Fve always stayed on the safe side, myself.”

"I’ll take two,” Judy said.

On the way home she paused under a magnolia tree and, putting her
hand into her basket, picked up one of the brilliant fraits and bit into it.
It was full of juice, and the red juice ran down her chin. It had a strange
bland taste at first, but after she had eaten it her mouth was acid. She
wiped her chin and went on, waiting for anything.

If it’s poison, ifii be God’s will, she thought, and if it isn’t poison, that’s
God’s will, too.

She walked on, meditating, and reached the shabby boardinghouse and
went into the two rooms on the ground floor where she and her father

THE TOWNSMAN

1,47

were stopping. He was not there, and she put away her vegetables, all
except the love apple, which she put on the .m.antelpiece, alx)ve the iron
grate.

I feel, perfectly ail right, she thought calmly, looking at it. And then it
seemed to her that she had discovered the only way ,to know 'God’s, wdli
It was to do as she liked and wait for God to do soiiietM,cg tO' her-^-or
nothing, if He did not mind. She laughed, yawned, and threw herself on
her bed. She' could sleep at any time of day, and now, after a moinent,
she fell into sleep, her head turned a little to one side, her .red lips closed
and smiling.

In his library old Dr. Pierre Beaumont sat motionless while he liste.ned
to the sheriff.

^'Sit down, tlarry,” he said suddenly.

“No, suh, Fd rawtha stand,” the sheriff replied. “Anyway, Fve said ail
I kin say, jes’ as I did all I could. They was plumb determined, Doc,
Nothin’ I could say, nothin’ I could do, would hold ’em back. Seems like
they was druv by somethin’ inside ’em.”

Dr. Beaumont did not answer. The room was dark with the shadows
of vines from the windows, vine shadows upon oak panels. But he would
not have an5h:hmg in the garden cut because years ago his young wife
Lavinia had planned that garden. “My garden,” she had called it

She had died under the knife when their son Pierre was not quite four
years old. She had had a strange internal inflammation, and in a few hours
was in such fever and agony that he had insisted upon an operation. Young
Mallory Bain had done it, a brilliant surgeon, and he had stood by. Thou-
sands of times he had recalled that hour and had examined it second by
second. He could not have operated. To have cut into that sweet romantic
flesh would have been beyond Ms power. His hand would have trembled.
Love could not take up a knife even to save. It needed Bain’s cold youth.
There was nothing he could say was done wrong. And yet if he had forced
himself to operate, with all his experience, could he not have saved the
few minutes too much for her heart? And yet, if she had died under his
hand, could he have lived for Pierre? Much of his life bad been spent in
this pondering. He pondered it more and more as Pierre grew up into a
worthless youth, and then into an idle and worthless man.

Eleven days ago when he was killed by a slate-colored Negro boy, the
son of one of the Beaumont slaves, the question was answered inaliy. He
ought to have operated and tried to save Lavinia because the boy was not
worth saving.

“I reckon you did do all you could, Hairy,” he said now. He was a
very old man, eighty-one his next birthday. He felt tired and wanted the
room to himself, and this big, sweat-smelling man filled it and used up the
air. “I reckon if the boy was doomed to die, it was just as well to get it over

148

AMEiaCAN TRIPTYCH

with. But I hate to have my family mixed up in lynching. I believe in a fair
trial for a nigger, even if he has killed my only son.”

‘'Yes, suh,” the sheriff replied, “Ev’ybody knows how you love justice,
Doc.” ■

“Yes,” said the old man slowly. “I love justice.”

He was reminded by this of the letter he had received from a young
man in Kansas which he had not answered. It was in regard to a lad
named Beaumont— Pierre Beaumont. A false claim, he would have said,
except that there was the name Sue. He remembered Sue very well, a
beautiful mulatto child that had belonged to Lavinia’s Bettina. Bettina had
come with Lavinia and had brought with her a six-months-old baby. He
had asked Lavinia once about it, and Lavinia had shaken her head.

“Don’t ask me, Pierre, We don’t know, Bettina’s half-white, and the
baby is more than that. I’ve never asked Bettina. We don’t want to know.
Anyway, the white blood doesn’t count— the black blood decides.” Lavinia,
so soft and exquisite a creature, could sometimes be crystal hard.

“Good-by, Harry,” he said faintly.

“Good-by, Doc. Sho’ do regret it happened like it did.”

He backed away out of the door, and outside in the hall came upon an
old Negro man, straightening up from the keyhole.

“Hey, you,” he said. “What you doin’, Joe?”

“Nuthin’,” Joe answered.

The sheriff stared at him. “Don’t look like nothin’,” he remarked. “It
looks doggone funny when a man bends hisself over to look in a keyhole.”

“I wan’t lookin’, I was listenin’,” Joe said. “I wanted to know somepin’.”

“What?” the sheriff asked.

“Did I unastan’ you to say, suh, ’at dey got Lem?”

“They did,” the sheriff replied.

Joe’s wrinkled face quivered. “ ’At’s ail I wanted to know, suh,” he said.

“What’s it to you?” the sheriff demanded.

“Lem was my boy,” the old Negro replied. “Least, he was my wife’s
boy. She guv ’im birth eighteen years ago when she was chambermaid
hyeah and Doc Beaumont tol’ me to mah’y her, because somebody oughta
do it quick. I did it to oblige him, and then Lem was bawn. But she was
all right. She was a good wife ’cept she always loved Lem bes’ of all de
chilien. Reckon I gotta go tell her Lem is daid.”

He shambled away. The sheriff stared after him, shrugged, and put on
his wide hat.

Everythin’s all mixed up, he thought. How you goin’ to get justice that-
a-way? He let himself out of the house and ran down the marble steps to
the lawn.

In the library old Dr. Beaumont sighed and stirred himself. Justice must
be done, he thought wearily. He found his quill pen and sharpened it, and
with long pains and many small waverings and unnecessary movements he

THE TOWNSMAN 149

sat down, at his big table of Eaglish oak to aaswer Jonathan Goodliffe's
letter. ' .

Dear Sir:

In view of your letter of the twenty-first December I beg,; to .
say that if the Young Man .in question has Merit and Ability^, I,
shall be pleased to extend to him the Sum of Five Flundred Dol-
lars a Year until Ms medical Education is completed^ provided
it is understood he makes no Claim upon me otherwise.

I remain, sir, yours faithfully,

Pierre Dubois Beaumont, ,M.D.,

Then he sat down again and watched the long hanging shadows upon
the dark oali. . . . How could a little blond boy .with Lavinia^s eyes grow
up to be a tall laogMng stranger, an idler, a wastrel? When had the change
begun, and how had he not seen it until it was finished and too late? He
had failed in everything—a brilliant surgeon, but not able to save his own
wife; a father, but not able to save his own son. Justice! It was a great cold
word, but it was all that remained to a solitary old man.

I must put it in my will, he thought.

Winter ended and spring was come, and Median was beleaguered in
mud. Each year Jonathan forgot the mud, and it was worse each spring.
To be snowbound was one thing, but to be mudbound was another. A
blizzard, a roaring tigerish wind, snow banked to the roof— these could be
large noble enemies. Men boasted of them and compared their labors
against them. But mud was a disgusting slime, ensnaring the feet. It was
enraging to look into a sky as softly blue as a field of English forget-me-
nots, with clouds as innocent and white as iambs upon it, and to have the
feet held and made filthy in a spreading of mire.

''Therell be no wagons until the worst of this is over,'' Henry Drear
said dolefully in his empty inn.

Jonathan gave up cleaning his floor because the children came muddied
to the knees. He was a harder teacher than he had ever been because he
was so impatient with the mud. There was no good in spring as long as
there was this mud. Judy would not be coming, for he suspected Joel’s
comfort and the will of God would be closely allied. It was misery to sit
at his desk with the door open and feel the sweet warm air and know that
if he stepped beyond the threshold he would sink into black mud. He

150

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

loatlieci it with a personal fury because he hated to be 'uncleaii. He could
not go about att day as the rest of Median did with a casing of mud upon
his legs, halfway to his thighs. It put him into a fret.

■ begin roads,” he said one day in the store where he had gone for
food.

'‘You’ll be beginnin’ somethin’ if you do,” Lew said dryly. "Where’ll
they begin and where’ll they go to in a country like this that spreads itself
out over everything?”

"They’ll begin at Median,” Jonathan said firmly, "and they’ll go as far
as Median folk need to go.”

He did indeed begin his work on roads that spring by himself digging
from the sod house toward the square the path of a straight narrow walk.

"What you goin’ to put in it?” Bill White asked, having heard of it.
"There ain’t a stone in a hundred miles.”

"Fm going to put in posts and boards,” Jonathan replied.

"It’ll be like layin’ a floor to the square,” Bill said, astonished.

"It’ll do until someday we’ll have roads like a Christian country,” Jon-
athan retorted.

That was the beginning of boardwalks in Median. When Jonathan could
walk out of the sod house and around a side of the square to the store in
eleven minutes Lew said, "Reckon I can add on as far as Drear’s, and
Drear can finish out to the comer if he feels good.”

Drear did, after great objections. And then Jonathan, looking into the
drying mud of the square, thought of something else.

" ’Twould be pretty to plant trees and grass there,” he said, “ ’twouid
improve the town wonderfully. Why shouldn’t the school do it?”

He impressed his pupils, though it was against the will of some. Abram
Hasty saw no good in it, but Beaumont was ardent to help and, to Jon-
athan’s surprise, so was Matthew Cobb.

"Where we come from in Massachusetts there was trees and grass along
the streets,” Matthew said.

"When are you folks going West?” Jonathan asked.

“Don’t look hardly like weTe goin’,” Matthew said despondently.
"Maw’s made up her mind she won’t go no farther now that Paw’s got
a good store job. She likes it here,”

"And you don’t, I take it, from your looks,” Jonathan said.

"There’s nothin’ to do in Median,” Matthew said,

"Nothing to do!” Jonathan said.

"Well, anyways, no Indians to fight or gold to dig out of the ground,
and no cowboys.”

"We won’t hold school tomorrow,” Jonathan said. "We’ll plant trees
instead.”

He saw Katie, tying her books with a string, look severe at this. "I can’t
get my feet wet,” she said.

"You don’t have to get your feet wet,” Jonathan retorted. Katie had

THE TOWNSMAN'

151

come regularly to schooi since CMstmas, but now she never stayed to
sweep up or straighten as once she had. She came and did her lessons
moderately and went home with the others.' And he had broken abruptly
Ms habit of Sunday dinner by saying frankly to Lew, '^.F!! feel better not to
come Sundays, Lew, if youll forgive me.”

“Sure,” Lew said casually.

Now he glanced at Katie with private disgust. He perceived her .meaning.
S,he looked Jmportant and rem,ote and her bristling little pigtails ■ s,he .had
tied up in loops around her head. He 'felt suddenly angry 'with her lor
growing up into a woman.

The next morning he took the boys to the river. They found small cot-
tonwoods and dried them. and put them onto a mud sledge and, with a
team loaned by a boy’s father who was a farmer near Median, they dragged
them to the square and planted them. Katie did not appear, and he was
glad of it. With the others he worked hard, and by the end of the third
day they had planted fifty young cottonwoods. People stopped to look at
them with curiosity and pleasure.

“Don’t know why nobody thought of plantin’ trees before,” Henry Drear
said.

“Makes a body feel the town’s here to stay,” Abram Cobb said from the
door of the store.

“It’s a good job,” Jonathan said heartily to the muddy children. “School
on Monday’!! be more fun after it. And you, Abram”— he turned to the
great gawky boy— “you were good at it. I saw you heaving the trees.”

Abram was abashed and spat before he spoke. “ Twa’n’t nothin’ to me,”
he said.

“It goes to show books aren’t everything for some jobs,” Jonathan said
pleasantly.

Abram, dazed by this perception in his teacher, could look only confused.

“Good night, all, until Monday,” Jonathan said tranquilly.

Sundays were his good days. He portioned them out carefully into what
he had to do. First there was his shaving and washing, then he ate break-
fast, and then he cleaned house. That took most of his morning.

He was in the midst of this the next day when, looking up from sweep-
ing the floor, he saw Sue upon the threshold. She canted a live chicken in
her hand by the legs.

“Come in, Mrs. Parry,” he said surprised. He saw Stephen often, but
not Sue.

“I’ll only take a minute, Mr. Goodliffe,” she said.

“Sit down,” Jonathan said, putting down his broom.

But she could not sit easily in his presence. She sat on the corner of a
chair, and the chicken began to flutter and squawk.

“I brought this-hyeah fowl,” she said, “thinkin’ you might like to start
chickens. She’s full of eggs and will set, Tm sure.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘‘TTaank, you, FlI be glad of it,” he said.

■ She stooped and tore a bit of the hem from her petticoat and tied the
bird’s legs and took it outside. Then she came back and sat down edgewise
again and looked' at him out of sad and solemnly dark eyes.

Goodliffe, did you evah git an answer to dat letter Beaumont toF
me you wrote for him?”

*T never did,” Jonathan said. ‘T was about to write another as' soon as
the mud clears. The mail’s delayed by mud.”

been waitin’,” Sue said, ‘‘ ’cause I know somepin.”

/mat?” Jonathan asked.

Beaumont is daid,” she replied gravely.

^‘Have you had a letter?” he asked. There was something strange about
her, .

‘*No,” she replied. She wore round gold earrings in her ears set with
small grayish pearls. ‘But I know. I began to know a while back. But I
wa’n’t sure. Now I am.”

“How?” he asked. He wanted to be amused and somehow was not.

She turned her strong profile to him, first one side and then the other.
“See, Mr. Goodliffe? Them earrings was soldered on my ears by my Beau-
mont master. He said I wasn’t never to take ’em off until he died. He said
they was full of spell, and as long as he was alive the pearls would shine.
But when they turned dark I could know he was daid. Then I could take
’em off.”

He saw them gray against her fine dark skin.

“I can’t believe that, Mrs. Parry,” he said firmly. “I believe he said it,
of course, but not that it can be true.”

“No, sub, I wouldn’t expect you to believe it,” she said quietly. “But of
co’se I knows what I knows, suh. All I wanted to know was if you heard
anything.”

“No, I haven’t,” he said. “But I’ll let you know if I do, and if I don’t I’ll
write again.”

She went away, and he went on sweeping. He did not believe in that sort
of thing.

But the first mail brought him a letter folded and sealed with wax, and
when he opened it he found it was from a lawyer’s firm. Old Dr. Pierre
Beaumont, the letter said, was dead. His last act, apparently, for he died
alone in his library, was to write a letter granting five hundred dollars a
year to a young man named Pierre Beaumont. Could information be sent
concerning this individual?

Jonathan was so astonished that he forgot that five minutes before he
had been sore with disappointment because this was his only letter, and
that still there was no word from Judy or his mother. He took the letter at
once to Sue Parry. She was washing clothes outdoors under a cottonwood
tree, and Jonathan hastened to her.

THE TOWNSMAN

''You were right,” he said. "A Beaumont is dead. And it looks as though
he has left enough money to your boy to make him free.”

She lifted her dark hands out of the suds and raised them upward,
"Thank You, God,” she said to the sky. Her hands dropped and she cried
out for Beaumont. He came running barefoot out of the house, "Boy, you
is free,” she said solemnly.

Beaumont*s red lips parted. He looked at Jonathan, speechless, and Jon-
athan said quickly, "I think it’s all right— I’m going to write back to the
lawyers and tell them who you are.”

He gave the letter to Beaumont. The boy took it and read it carefuliy,
and handed it back.

"Thank you, Mr. Goodliffe,” he said, and stood still for an instant and
then raced away over the plains, and Jonathan and Sue looked at each
other and smiled.

The mud dried, and the caravans of spring came upon Median. Jon-
athan, happening one day to be at the tavern to fetch his loaf of bread,
found the house lively with people he had never seen before.

"Folks are on the move,” Henry roared at him. "Two wagonioads to-
day, and looks like there was another cornin’,”

Jonathan turned involuntarily to the door. Over the soft, deepening green
of the new grass he could indeed see not one wagon but three, hurrying,
doubtless, to make the haven of American House by night.

"When I see the first wagon, I know winter’s over,” Henry said. A young
woman came out of the kitchen with a bowl of mush and disappeared into
the inner room. Henry watched her, then he spat into the tin spittoon in-
side the bar. “Awful nice folks,” he said. "Seems like every spring we get
nicer folks. Don’t know what the East’ll do with all the up-and-comin’ ones
gone. She’s from around Philadeiphy, she and her husband and two little
boys. Little feller’s got a upset stomach, so they’re iayin’ over a day. Then
they’re goin’ straight on West.”

"Why do they all want to keep going West?” he asked curiously.

A tall, long-faced young man came in. "Howdy,” he said and passed by
them into the inner room.

"That’s her husband— name’s Blume,” Henry said. "Hell, I don’t know,”
he went on. "It’s maybe because the world whirls that way. ’Least, that’s
how I figger it. We don’t know we feel it, but somehow’r other, we do feel
it atumin’ and th’owin’ us west. Look at Columbus-what made him come
this-a-way? And I bet you the Pacific Ocean won’t stop us, neither. Come
the land is full up to the shore line, we’ll just keep goin’ on across to

^'Chiny.”';'v.\:'>;"V ■ ■

"It’s senseless,” Jonathan said, "At that rate, we’ll just keep goin’ for-
ever, round and round.” He got up and went into the kitchen and took
from a board table one of the freshly baked loaves there. Mrs. Drear, her
face purple with the heat of the hot range, looked up at him.

154

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

• : “Jemefs. not goin’ to marry that feller after all/’' /she said abruptly.

^'No?” Jonathan said. ‘‘Why not?”

“She don’t say why,” Mrs. Drear said irritably. She wiped sweat from
her eye with her thick hand. “It’s a curse to have a pretty girl in these-hyere
parts, Jonathan. There’s too many men to pick and choose from. A girl
tosses. ’em up like dice to see which one’ll give her most I wish Jennet’d
come home, but she won’t Now she’s talkin’ about Oregon. What’s a
troupe, Jonathan?”

“Why, it’s actresses,” he said, astonished.

“She’s In a troupe,” Mrs. Drear said gloomily and clattered the oven
door.

Jonathan went out The wagons were driving up now, and he could
see the faces of people in the brightness of the late afternoon. But he
went on toward home. Under his arm the loaf of bread smelled deliciously
fresh, and he pulled off a bit of crust and ate it. . . . Why should people
go on and on restlessly when all they needed for happiness was in four
wails under a roof upon a bit of ground? If wagons were coming, Judy
was coming.

By the door Beaumont was spading up his garden. Jonathan, remember-
ing his own first hungers, had told the boy he would give him a dollar if
he would do the first spading, and with the dollar buy him some writing
paper and a pen of his own or, if he preferred, a book.

“I’ll wait to decide till I feel the money in my hand,” Beaumont said.
“Whichever makes it feel lightest, I’ll spend it for that.”

When he saw Jonathan come, he straightened and leaned on his spade.

“Did you hyeah from them lawyers in N’Orleans yet, Mr. Goodiiffe?”

“No, I haven’t, Beau,” Jonathan replied. “If I don’t hear soon, I’m going
to write again.”

“And if you don’t hyeah again, suh?”

“Maybe m have to go and see them,” Jonathan said. “But I don’t want
to go just now.”

“No, suh,” Beaumont said.

Jonathan went into the house. He did not want to leave here just now
when Judy might be coming any day.

Beaumont’s handsome head thrust itself in at the door.

“Mr. Goodiiffe, did you tell ’em I wasn’t white?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jonathan said sharply. “It wasn’t their business, I con-
sidered. But I did think I ought to tell them you were a natural son. That’s
their legal right to know. Want some bread and treacle, Beau?”

“I do indeed, suh, thank you. Fm hongry all the time,” Beaumont smiled,
shamefaced. “Last night we trapped somepin like a groundhog, only it
wasn’t that exactly, Paw said, and Maw made a stew an’ I kep’ on eatin’
after evybody was full, but today Fm empty again. It’s real discouragin’.”

He put out a big delicately shaped earth-soiled hand. Jonathan looked
at it as he always did. He knew Beaumont’s hand better than his own.

THE TOWNSMAN

155 '

There was nothing of any interest to him in his own, indeed, with its broad
palm and rather short' fingers.' He did not like his own hand better for
being like his father’s.'

He cut two slices of the loaf, gently because it was so fresh, and spread
it with molasses, and they stood at the door eating it. Then Jonathan put
his hand in his pocket and took out a silver dollar.

“Here’s your money, Beau,” he said. “Whaf s its weight?”

Beaumont, smiling, held it a moment. “It weighs lightest when I think
of a book,” he said.

“What book?” Jonathan asked.

“An anatomy book, please, suh,” Beaumont said. “I’m mighty curious
about people’s insides.”

“Very well, Beau,” Jonathan said. He had long ago cut from news-
papers the advertisements of bookshops in the East and had bought, during
the course of the year, four books, though always with a sense of guilt
because his mother might suddenly need all the money he could muster. He
had at times a serious sense of disaster overwhelming her, because still she
did not write.

“Thank you, Mr. Goodlifie,” Beaumont said. “Ill be goin’ home, then.”

“Good night, Beau,” Jonathan answered.

He stood a moment, as he often did now, looking out over the smooth
green prairie, so joyful after the sodden black of the burned ground. If
he did not look toward Median he could imagine that no human being
was upon the earth and under the sky except himself. Then, against the
afterglow in the eastern sky, he saw the cocked black shape of a wagon
top. There was still another wagon coming. If he did not get some word
from his mother, soon he would have to get a seat in one of them and go to
see how she was, he thought; and then remembered that he might have to
go to New Orleans. He would have to go if there was any trouble about the
legacy for Beaumont.

At the barest thought of going anywhere, this foothold of his upon the
prairie was suddenly precious. I shan’t go before Judy comes, he thought.
Upon this great prairie two people, after waiting all winter, might miss
each other in the spring, if one did not stay steadily where he was.

He would have said that the day of Judy’s coming must be different
from any other, or at least that he would wake with a sense of her ap-
proach. Every day now brought more wagons, and Median was full of

156

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

restlessiiess. In the store Lew . was so busy that Katie stopped coming: to
■school. Jonathan saw her one afternoon cleaning her bit of the shelf under-
neath the long table at which they all sat. He paid no heed to her because
she often cleaned and rearranged her small , belongings. Today she tied
everything together with string, and he saw this and knew what was about
to happen. But he said nothing. He seldom said anything to her nowadays.
It was she who spoke to him.

'Jonathan, Fm not coming to school any more. Pop needs me in the
store.”

“Well, Katie!” he said. She stood before him, an angular young girl,
slight but without any grace except goodness. But because she was so good,
his heart pricked him.

“Good-by,” she said.

“Why do you say good-by?” he answered. “Ill see you whenever I come
to the store, and maybe you’ll be coming this way sometimes to tell me
how badly I keep house, and maybe even clean a bit for me— eh, Katie?
Like old times, eh?”

He had the impulse to put out his hand and did not yield to it, knowing
that he did not really want to touch her hand. She was watching him closely.

“Fm goin’ to be busy,” she said sullenly.

But he understood that sullenness of hers and forgave it.

“Then I’ll come sometimes and help you,” he said. “Good-by then,
Katie.”

He went back to his work of setting a lesson on the board for the next
day, and so he let her go, though somehow he felt, even though his back
was turned to her, a faint pull of the heart, or perhaps only of the con-
science, as she went. But he let her go and did not turn his head until he
knew she was gone, and then she was trudging along the boardwalk. And
what he saw then was that her long feet turned out too much as she walked.

Nevertheless, this faint regret, this compunction or whatever it was,
clouded his being slightly. Otherwise how was it that he did not perceive
Judy’s coming the next day?

It was a Saturday and a holiday. But his school tasks were shortened
now anyway because the older boys had work to do on farms. Only the
Hasty boys were still able to stay because the mill would have little work to
do until a harvest came. And Jonathan, some weeks before, turning over
in his mind ways of earning something more, had found that on Saturdays
and Sundays he could work at the tavern for Henry Drear for his food and
half a dollar a day. Thus it happened that in the midst of Saturday morning’s
stir he saw a wagon come in, and out of it unfolded Joel’s long stif shape,
and then he saw Judy, poised with her skirts in her hands, waiting an in-
stant before she jumped to the ground. He saw her from the tavern door, a
beautiful girl in a full green dress and a green bonnet, her golden-brown
curls on either side of her rosy face. He saw her great black eyes glancing
everywhere and thought with a lift of the heart that they searched for him.

THE TOWNSMAN

157

He went out, wanting to ran; but, compelled by tbe habit of Ms , shyness,
he walked sedately toward her.

“Hello, Judy,” he said in so offhand a voice that he was disgusted with
himself. But he could not speak differently or make his voice warmer, be-
cause Ms' heart beat so strongly that he had to hide it. Then he perceived
that people were looking at her, men and women, as they' came and went
from store to tavern from their wagons, and he hated her to stand there
before them.

“Fll help you down,” he said.

“I can get down myself,” she said quickly and jumped before he could
help her. He felt her fall against him for a second and he put out his, arm.
But she righted herself.

“How are you, Jonathan?” she asked.

“Fm well enough,” he replied. “And you?”

“Fm, well,” she said.

TMs was stupid talk and like nothing he had planned. He was angry
with it, and yet he could do nothing. Whenever he had dreamed of their
meeting, it was always alone.

Joel came hurrying up, full of his business. “Good day, Goodliffe.” He
put out his long, thin, always-dirty hand. “Nice to see you. Judy, we aren’t
stopping. There’s a wagon pulling out tMs afternoon for California. It is
against my principles, of course, to travel on the Lord’s Day, but I’ve just
prayed and God tells me to go ahead, siace it’s hard to find a wagon that
can take two people straight to California without stop. But God has pre-
pared tMs way. The brother’s wife died and one of the older girls, and so
there’s plenty of room. Well, Mr. Goodliffe, I’ve long felt the call to Cali-
forma, and now it looks like Fm goin’ to get there, a land flowing with milk
and honey. So, Judy, just get out and rest a little, and after we’ve eaten
we’ll start. Excuse me, Mr. Goodliffe. I have some details to attend to.”

He nodded, his dark eyes glittering, the wind under his broad hat lifting
his long, straight black hair from Ms shoulders, and hurried off. But what
he had said drove away Jonathan’s shyness.

“Oh, Judy,” he gasped, “you can’t go— not when we’ve had no chance
—Judy, you didn’t even write to me!”

“I was going to write,” she said in that slow, pleasant, rich voice of
hers, “but somehow the time just escaped me.”

She could write, then! He was suddenly very angry.

“Judy, you knew how Fd be hoping and hoping— and all my letters to
you!”

“I kept them, Jonathan,” she said.

He was comforted a little and grew gentler. “Judy, that’s sweet. But
think of me, without a letter from you to keep!”

“I surely ought to have written,” she said sadly, turning her big eyes to
him. When she looked at him full he saw again how extraordinary were

158

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH

her eyes. The irises were unusually large, the whites so clear, and the
lashes long and thick.

, ‘‘Oh, Judy/' he muttered, “where shall we go?"

“Let’s go- to your house,” she said.

His head swam, and he struggled for reason, “You oughtn’t , maybe To
come to a .bachelor’s home alone,” he said. “WeTe not children any more,
Judy.”;Certainiy no child could' fee! as he did, , he thought solemnly.

She laughed. “Well, you go along yourself, and then I’ll just walk that
way,” she said.

He caught at her words and smiled back at her, and, feeling more reck-
less than he ever had in his life, he strode to the sod house.

Judy, looking after him and seeing everything, seemed to have forgotten
him. She tugged at a small cherrywood box in the back of the wagon. Two
men from different directions who were apparently in great haste on their
own. business stopped.

' “Let me help you,” the eider one said..

But the younger one was there first. “Let me,” he said,, and lifted do,w,ii
thesmalbox.

“Oh, thank you,” she said to them both, with her lovely smile for each.

“Where shall I take it, Miss— ?” the young man asked and hesitated,
hopefully, for her name.

But she did not give it. She took the box from him gently. “I can take it
now, thank you,” she said and let him for reward just touch her fingers.
She understood men so well and allowed them these small harmless re-
wards. She took the box, and- went' into the - tavern, pausing at the kitchen
door to speak to Mrs. Drear.,

“Well, mercy me,” Mrs. Drear said, “are you and Joel here, too, Judy?
Every room’s full, my dear, . Seems like the whole East is movin’ at once
this spring.”

“We’re not stopping, thank you, Mrs, Drear,” Judy said. “May I just
brash my hair in your bedroom?”

“Do, child,” Mrs. Drear .said: in absent distraction. How to feed thirty
people at once was a puzzle, she thought. And Judy, perceiving she was
forgotten, smiled and sauntered toward the bedroom. It was in morning
confusion, the bed still not made and Henry’s clothes on the floor. Not from
any compulsion but merely out of half-laay kindness, she made the bed and
hung up the clothes on a nail on the wall. Then she poured water from a
pitcher into a china basin on the washstand and washed her face and hands.
Opening the cherrywood box, she took out a small round mirror and her
comb and brush and brushed her hair into ringlets and brushed her eye-
brows with a feather, and powdered her nose from a little bag of corn-
starch, She put on her hat and closed the box. Looking as fresh as though
she had not been weeks traveling, she went quietly down the walk toward
the sod house, avoiding her father without seeming to do so. He was ar-
guing with Lew Merridy outside the door of the general store. Lew, she

THE TOWNSMAN 159

noticed calmly, was sweating, and that meant her father had God on his

side.

As for herself, , she had not the least idea what God’s will' was going
to be for her in the next hour.

■ ^^onathan?’’ she called softly but very clearly at the door of the sod
house. He came out instantly from his' bedroom. She saw that he had
changed his shirt and smoothed his brown hair, and she smiled at him.

^‘Judy, come in— sit down. I made some tea, without even knowing if you
like tea, but my mother always wants a cup of tea. Sit down here in this
chair. Oh, Judy!”

She sat down, and he stood looking at her.

^‘Judy,” he said solemnly, *‘rve seen you here again and again— all
through this long winter.”

She smiled, quite understanding how he felt. ^^Where’s your mother?”
she asked. '

**She’s out in the West with my father and the children. Judy, let’s not
talk except about you and me— Judy, did you think of me?”

He longed to kneel beside her and was too shy to do it, at least until
she gave him a sign. She was taking off her hat and smoothing her curls,
and he watched every movement of her white hands in that bright hair,
did think of you, Jonathan, often.”

How, she was wondering, would she know God’s will? Maybe if she
could make up her own mind it would be easier.

“Did you, dear?” he cried. “And did you long to see me as I longed to
see you?” Now he could kneel and he did and was surprised to find that he
was scarcely shy at all.

“I did want to see you,” she said gravely. Her eyes upon his face were
so honest and pure that he could not put out his arms. He was awed before
this lovely goodness,

“Oh, Judy, you can’t go, when you’ve just come!” he cried. “I can’t
bear it. We haven’t met for so long, we love each other— don’t we, dearest?
—but we scarcely know each other. Can’t you persuade your father to let
you stay behind?”

“Where would I stay?” she asked mnocently.

He longed with all his heart to cry out, “Stay with me— many me—”
But his native prudence forbade it. A man ought not to marry a woman
he did not know, even if he loved her. It was not prudent, and in his heart
he knew that he was compelled above all else by love of wisdom.

And she, waiting, thought, If he asks me to marry him, maybe I’ll let
that be God’s will.

“You could stay with Mrs. Drear until— until we know each other bet-
ter,” he faltered and cursed himself, and then thought irrelevantly of his
father and how if he had been his father’s son he would have Judy in his
arms and be telling her quickly all he longed to tell her. But he was not
thus his father’s son.

160

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Judy’s Yoke broke, sweet and troubled. '^Suppose you didn’t like me
so well when you knew me, Jonathan, and then Fd be all alone here.”
: This at least he could deny. ‘‘Oh, my dearie dear,” he cried, “Fd only
love you more.”

She looked at him, her eyes , very large and Ml of question.

“What is it, Judy?” he urged her.

“Nothing, Jonathan,” she said in a small voice. But what she was think-
ing was that if he would only love her more, then why did he not ask her
now to marry him and so let God’s will be done? She would have said this
except it was not fair, perhaps, to force God’s hand.

“Judy, it’s something—I can tell by your eyes.”

“No, it isn’t,” she insisted, and then, to deny this, she allowed two large
clear tears to well up in her eyes as she gazed at him. Jonathan was dis-
tracted. He put out his arms without knowing that he did, and she came
into them gracefully, with a little sob, and put her head upon his shoulder,
and he felt her sweet weight.

“Oh,” he groaned, and held her to him breast to breast, cheek to cheek.
The breath went out of his body. She was so clinging, her flesh so yielding
and warm. Only once had he ever held a girl in his arms, and that had
been when he danced with Constance Favor in Dentwater. But her body,
stiff with stays, had been nothing like Judy’s here in his arms. Beneath
her gown he felt her sweet, unrestrained shape, slender and soft. He moved
his hand to hold her more closely and touched under her bodice her lovely
breast. He was stupefied with the wonder of this, and then he drew his
hand away again quickly, knowing by an instinct that he must stay master
of himself, for she could not help him.

“Oh, my little dear,” he said tenderly, and smoothed her hair from her
face so that he could see her closed eyes.

This, she thought, is just the same as if he asked me to marry him.
We’H be engaged now, and if I like being engaged to him, we’ll be married.

And he was thinking, in the core of the whirling of blood and brain,
that when he told his mother she’d be asking him a hundred questions
about Judy that he could not answer. Was she a clever girl and did she
like books, to match him, and could she sew and cook and make a sod
house into a home, and did she like children and was she brave to stay
alone with little children when the man must be away, and did she lie
abed late in the morning, and was she saving and sweet-tempered in pov-
erty and wise in riches— only he’d never be rich!— in this beautiful body
had she wisdom— had she wisdom—

Judy lifted her head suddenly. “I couldn’t just stay behind and give my
father no excuse,” she said.

He stared at her. “No, you couldn’t,” he agreed. He felt a strange little
pushing force come from her to him, as though she were compelling Mm
to a point he was not able quite to reach himself.

THE TOWNSMAN

She waited, and after a moment said in her gentlest voice, “So I reckon
I had better go. on, Jonathan.”

“But youll come back!” he whispered. “You will come back, Judy?
See, dear, we’E write letters—we’ii get to know each other very well in
letters, and then well know what we ought to do.”

She did not move her eyes from his face. He felt their warm, unmoving
gaze flicker, once to his lips and then back to his eyes again. ■

“Judy, you do love me?” he demanded.

The beautiful clear eyes did not fail. “How ■ do I know, Jonathan?”
Judy said. “I don’t know you well enough.”

That night after she was gone, in the midst of the most acute suffering
he had ever had he discovered this speech of hers left like a small dagger
thrust secretly into the tenderest part of his being. She had risen soon
after the thrust, saying so amiably that he was wholly deceived, “I must
go back now, Jonathan— ifli be time to go.”

“But you will write, dearest?”

“Every week, Jonathan, if you will.”

“I will— I promise, without one fail!”

“Good-by, Jonathan.” She lifted her face and kissed him on the cheek
so sweetly that his knees trembled.

“Oh, Judy, 1 can’t—” he gasped.

But she moved away from him with a gentle quickness toward the door,
paused to smfle and give him a look. He made to run after her and then
stayed himself. He could never hide from that teasing, hearty, eager crowd
what he was feeling. If he stood there to see her go, all his habits of re-
straint would burst and leave him what he was, a wretched suffering man,
in love with a woman and yet determined to keep his own soul.

He let her go and spent the hours after she was gone working fiercely
upon his garden. Work, work— But the sun went down and he was hungry
and must eat and then it was night and he lay down to sleep, and then
he discovered the dagger she had left in him. Somehow or other she had
taken his wise and right decision and twisted it and sharpened it and thrust
it back into him. How did she know she loved him, she had inquired of
him calmly, when she did not know him well enough?

This was only his own wisdom. He recognized it, thus returned to him,
and then the wound bled. He could have had her; she would have stayed.

“But I know I was right,” he said doggedly. “I was right, and she’ll have
to love me that way or Fll have to go without—”

But the wound bled steadily on, for all that, and for him the spring
was over.

‘'What good’s land to a man who’ll never know how to farm it?” Mary
said bitterly. In the hot summer wind that blew endlessly across the shorty
stiff grass, she put back a lock of her dry hair. She was talking to Clyde,
but they all heard her, because they were at the table. She knew she was
violating her deepest instinct of decency when thus she accused Clyde be-
fore his children; for if a woman destroyed a man in the eyes of his chil-
dren, the center of the home was gone. Ail through the years she had
insisted that the children respect theii* father. Even from Jonathan she
had refused to hear complaint against him. But now she could no longer
hold back her own bitterness.

“If you couldn’t make harvest from a rich bit of earth in England, how
can you do it here in this wild place, Ml of savages?”

“It ain’t full of savages, Mother,” Jamie said. He was home for a Sun-
day, a tall, brown-faced, blue-eyed boy with curly black hair burned by
the sun. He was in the swiftest of his growth, and he ate corn and beans
and the fish he himself had caught, and many of the scones Mary had
made for a treat spread with black molasses. “Just because an Indian
stopped by yesterday and scared you doesn’t mean the country’s full of
savages!”

“I don’t like them and I’ll never like them,” Mary said bitterly. She
was not less bitter because she could not tell them the real fear that still
darkened her. In usual circumstances she could have let it pass that she
was frightened badly by an Indian, though she had never seen one close
before. She had not even thought of them, knowing that they had been
taken away from Kansas and put into a reservation to the south. And then
yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon when she was alone in the house,
with Clyde away buying sheep and Ruth out in the fields with Maggie to
guard her from snakes, an Indian had come straight into the house.

“Without knocking or so much as a cry to know if anybody was in, or a
by your leave,” Mary had said angrily, telling them about it over and over
in the evening. “I was standing there mixing my dough for bread, and I
felt a hard hand on my shoulder, and I looked up and there was a big
ragged Indian, his wicked dark face right by mine. I dropped the crock
and screamed and dough all over to clean up, and then he pointed into his
mouth. He was hungry, if you please! And I had to go and fetch him bread
and good meat before he would go.”

She told none of them, not even Clyde, the reason for her remaining
terror. It was that, at the moment of her fright, when she looked up into
that wild face, she felt the first quickening of the child in her womb. What

THE TOWNSMAN

163

good could come of a child thus awakened to life? She kept brooding
over this, and because she was afraid she could bear nothing.

^^Besides, ■ Mother,” Jamie said, /‘sheep’s the thing here, and sheepVe
easy. Mr. Banks says' he’ll easy clear three thousand on the herds, and
that’s not to count the cattle, neither.”

“If your father gets sheep, they’ll all die of something or other,” she
said. ■ , ,

“Give over, Mary, do, there’s a good girl,” Clyde said, restraining him-
self, She was angry, he thought sullenly, because she was going to have
another child. Women were danged creatures at best. They wanted hus-
bands, and when they’d got them they were everlastingly complaining be-
cause they were men. And Mary, he thought resentfully, would be the
first to be angry if he looked sidewise and cross cuts at any other woman.
He’d found that out when he was only ordinary to Jennet Drear. It had
not been in his mind to think about Jennet Drear that time she came West
in the same lot of wagons as theirs, except to mind how nice it was to see
a girl laugh again. Women turned solemn so soon. And then Mary had
said to him, “I’m coming all this way to see you go hanging your tongue
out at a loud young girl, Clyde Goodlifie.”

“Oh, you be danged!” he had shouted.

“You just remember,” she had said so gravely that he was roaring mad
and had flung away. Still, he had remembered, and he had turned his back
when Jennet laughed, next time. He had enough trouble with the homestead
and his family on his hands without Mary angry at him. She was so small
and at times so amiable that only fearful experience had taught him what
she could be when she was angry with him.

“There’s no luck in you, Clyde, and there never will be,” Mary said
sadly. But she did give over, not because of Clyde or Jamie, who always
defended his father, but because she saw Ruth’s eyes suddenly fill with
tears that she turned to hide as she cut Maggie’s meat Ruth was adolescent
and so filled with sensitive feeling that everything hurt her, and most of
all quarreling in the house.

“I want more meat,” Maggie said loudly.

“Here ’tis, poppet,” Clyde said at once. He laughed at the child’s hearty
red face. “Pity she’s a girl, eh, Mary? She’d have made a rare boy an’
we could do with another boy. A man can’t have too many boys on a
homestead.”

“That’s easy to say, seeing a man don’t have to bear them,” Mary said.

Clyde gave up. He pushed back his chair furiously. “Reckon I’ll get
along,” he said furiously, “It’s pleasanter anywhere than here.”

“I’m sure it is,” Mary cried after him, “yet here is where I’ve got to
stay!”

“Oh, Mother, don’t!” Ruth pleaded.

Mary sighed and wiped her face. “You’re right,” she said, “for what’s
the good? Nothing’ll change a man from the moment he’s born.”

164

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

^‘You’re at him so, Mother,” Jamie said, makes my teeth on edge,
too.” .

■ Mary looked from one to the other of her ■ children. 'Take Ms side,
do,” she said sharply. “It’s always that way— a mother has to bear the
children and teach ’em decency and how to behave, and a man pays ’em no
heed, and so they love him best after all.”

“No, we don’t, Mother,” Ruth began, her eyes filling again. “We love
you best, but it isn’t that— what Jamie means—”

Mary gathered the scattered bits of her dignity together and rose to her
feet. Everything about her she loathed— the earth-dark walls of the dugoiit,
the earth floor, the table made of boards, the few miserable dishes, the
old ragged clothes they wore, the food that she could not make worth
eating. The garden she had begun in the spring had come to nothing. She
had longed for the taste of fresh green in her mouth and had nagged at
Clyde until he had plowed up a patch of the tough, short grass. But one
plowing had not been enough to kill those tenacious roots. They had come
to life again, crowding down her tender seedlings, and then had come the
dry summer winds and long weeks with no rain, and there was no shade
an5rwhere, and she had given up the garden, and the prairie had seized it.
She could scarcely tell that the grass had ever been disturbed.

And now with all her being she rebelled against her pregnancy. Yet
what was one to do when she had to live with a man who turned sullen
and tempestuous if she refused him her body? It seemed incredible to her
now that once Clyde’s kiss had been magic and his flesh her deepest ex-
citement. Something was wrong between men and women forever if usage
could so dim a glory. But she knew of nothing to do to save it, though its
loss had become the tragic atmosphere of her being in a way that she could
not understand and only dimly felt. Sometimes she longed to recall the old
glory and yet when she let Clyde see her longing in some slight look or
appealing word it had always the same end in this which had somehow
become meaningless except as a thing to fear.

“I’m going to lie down a bit,” she said. And then her quick heart was
touched by these three, her children— Ruth so troubled and Jamie sullen,
and even Maggie not knowing what to say. “Don’t heed me,” she said.
“Poor tMngs, you’ll never remember me as I really am— not a tired, cross
old woman—”

In their silence she went away and saw through the open door the dis-
tant road. It was only a trail across the grass, the beginning of which was
far to the east and the end at the edge of the Pacific Ocean. She could see
tiny moving spots m the heat shimmering above the summer-burned grass,
spots shining wMte in the sun. They were wagons.

“Go on,” she muttered, “keep on going, as if there was any sense to it!”

Jonathan wrote to his mother: “Now that the summer season is full,
I will not be idle. I have many plans in my head and even transcribed in

THE TOWNSMAN

165

part upon paper for the improvement of Median. The town is well located
as to water and crossroads, hut it is being allowed to grow up. haphazardly
and presents a careless appearance. When you return, it will present a
very different face, I hope.’’

The letter lengthened into the fullness of his plans, and upon the back
of the sheet he drew like a map what he hoped Median might become. It
was' a picture as neat as a draughtsman could have made it, of streets cross-
ing each other evenly. He had taken the present few houses of Median
and the square and had drawn them into the plan so skillfully' that one
would have said they had been placed purposely as they were Instead of
anyhow and by , chance.

No one in Median knew of this plan. He would have been abashed to
show it to anyone because he well knew it was presumptuous for a young
man and a newcomer to plan the town. Yet only to himself was Jonathan
a newcomer. He was used to the long life of father and son and grandsons
in a place such as Dentwater, But to the people in Median Jonathan
seemed, in spite of his youth, one of the settled citizens, because upon the
prairie to stay a day was usual and men delayed longer in a place only
if there were illness or an impediment of some sort, and beyond that only
if it was a destination. And for most of them there seemed no cause to
make Median a destination. It was not better than any other IMe village
in the middle of the prairie, and there was no reason to stay in it when
the uplands lay covered with rich grass for cattle, and beyond were moun-
tains where gold could be washed from the sands of the streams. Median
was a place only to pause for a night.

But to Jonathan it was a place as good as any other. He had come here
by chance, like a seed dropped by winds or a dying bird; and, like the seed,
having found here earth and sky and water, he could put down his roots
and send up his leaf.

For if it was not in him to dream the big dreams of his father and to
imagine the best always beyond, so it was not in him either to mope and
sit idle where he was. He was more restless after Judy went than he had
ever been in his life. Food was tasteless in his mouth and the school a
drudgery until it was over in the summer. Nothing he started could be
finished, and ill luck seemed to follow him in small ways. Thus his garden,
like all others that year, grew lushly in June but in July was set upon by
grasshoppers. There were not many, not more indeed than could be
caught by careful picking two or three times a day; but Jonathan hated
the feel in his hands of their soft bodies and crackling dry wings as he
picked them off into a bucket with a few inches of coal oil in the bottom
to catch them.

He heard nothing from the lawyers concerning Beaumont’s legacy, and
when he had begged his mother to write to him she wrote one of her stiff,
short letters beginning, take my pen in hand--” He read it many times,
unable to tell anything from it. “The weather is very fine,” he read. “But

166

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

arC' you, Mother?’’ .he muttered, striviug to see behind, the neat writing.'
''‘The wind blows tiresome, but ! try not to complain.”— Ah, but did she
have something much to complain of? “Your father has bought two hun-
dred head of sheep to be paid for when he sells. Jamie is fretting to go West
to, hunt gold. He is not fond of farming. But . he must help Ms' father. Ruth
is my comfort, but Maggie is a trial, so willful and naughty and her voice
very loud, and I have little time to teach her manners. Dear Son, I long to
see you and pray God we will meet somehow. Your loving Mother.”

She did not complain, and yet, breathing through the bare words, he
felt the atmosphere of a secret despair. But it might only be his imagination,
always too quick to feel trouble in her. When he was even a little boy he
used sometimes to go to her when he saw her grave and say sorrowfully,
“Mother, why don’t you smile?” And sometimes she kissed him, but some-
times she was impatient and said, “A body can’t be always laughing, Jon-
athan. There’s serious things, too, and one has to think of them.”

So now, to comfort himself, he wrote of what he was plan n ing and drew
the map of Median for her with the streets all neatly locked together and
where a church would stand some day and a bank and a schooihouse and
a post office and a town hall such as Blackpool had and where new shops
would go—stores, they would call them— and maybe some day a little fac-
tory for spinning wool from the sheep that men in the western parts raised.
But he told her nothing at all of Judy, and his letters to Judy were not
about Median. They were about himself and her.

And Judy, in California, found the letters waiting for her at the post
office in San Francisco, where he had told her he would write. She had
written him almost every week, but not letters like his. She had not written
of herself because she spent little time thinking of herself or of what was
ahead. She had learned to let what was about her be her life. Thus she
wrote to Jonathan that on such a day they had made twenty-six miles, and
at a certain town they had come to a railroad and for a day had ridden
on the train, which was very filthy with dust and had frightened them all
because it went so fast, and the road was so rough they could scarcely
keep their seats and the bell on the engine rang continuously because of the
jar, and once the conductor’s gun went oS by accident. Nobody was hurt,
but they were all frightened, thinking that Indians had attacked. And at
another place when they came down from the train they had to wait a week
before they could find a wagon to cross the mountains.

As he read these gently flowing letters over and over alone in his house,
Jonathan felt that he had her and yet that she escaped him, that telling him
everything she yet told him nothing,

“Write me what you think and feel, my dearest dear,” he wrote her,
“though I want to know everything else, too, and it’s sweet to read every-
thing that happens to you, but I want most of all to know what you are
thinking and feeling about everything, but most about you and me.”

Judy sat In a small, gray-walled shabby bedroom in a cheap hotel in

THE TOWNSMAN

167

SaB Francisco, hiS' letters 'm her lap, . looking down into the ?Md, ugly
street below. She tried to think and to feel so that she conid. write to
Jonathan, hot she could not keep her mind on it The street was a wonder-
ful sight. .It was full of ragged, gold miners from the hills and weIl-to-dO'
farmers and their wives in wagons full of vegetables and fruits and ladies
driving in carriages and gentlemen in tali hats and bright waistcoats and
carrying canes. It looked mixed and gay and as though everybody was
friendly, except she noticed shrewdly that the’ ladies and gentlemen only
spoke to each other. But there were quite a lot of them and some of them
were very handsome. She wondered if the la.dies bought their dresses here
and if indeed such dresses could be bought in San Francisco.

She had honestly planned when she had read all of Jonathan’s letters
to write him a long letter Ml of her thoughts and feelings. Instead, after a
while she got up in her slow, graceful fashion and laid the letters away in
a drawer; and, putting on her best straw bonnet that she had herself lined
with rows and rows of narrow ruffled lace, she went out into the sunny
street.

I can think and feel while Papa is preaching and Fll write him afterward,
she thought. And to a tall young gentleman who happened then to be
passing she said, her eyes upturned with their purest, most innocent look,
^‘Excuse me, sir, but will you tell me how to find the best shops for
ladies? I am a stranger in this city.”

He lifted his high silk hat. shall be charmed,” he said, and his voice
was delightful.

On that day Jonathan was actually farther away from Judy than he
had planned. He sat in the law offices of Bartlatt and Bayne, in the city of
New Orleans. He had come here so unexpectedly that he could scarcely
believe he was here. He had been at work one morning upon whitewashing
the inner earth walls of the sod house. It had occurred to him thus to
lighten the schoolroom for the new session. He was to have seven new
pupils this year, and he was hard put to it to find the space. He had been
thinking of the new schoolhouse he had put down in his plan for Median
and wished he might have it now. It was put opposite the church on the
square. At any moment, night or day, he could see that schoolhouse clearly
in his mind, it was to have two rooms and many windows. While he was
whitewashing the sod house, Beaumont had come in,

^Tve brought you a letter, suh,” he said. ‘T was in the sto’ and Mr.

168

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

Mcrridy satici mail had just come in and I said I*d take yours to you. Its
from N’Orieaus, suh.’'

At the word ^lettefMonathaii’s heart had turned over, because there
was always the possibility of a letter from Judy. Then it ordered itself again
and he put out his hand.

' . *'Let me see. Beau.” '

It was from New Orleans, a curt legal letter from the firm of lawyers
in whose offices he now sat. The letter asked for proofs of the alleged
Pierre Beaumonfs birth, and it desired to know whether or not the alleged
son was born of a white mother.

'Tn case the mother was not white,” the letter concluded, '‘the whole
case must be reconsidered.”

"Fli have to go and talk to them,” Jonathan said when he had read the
last sentence.

But first he had gone that night to the Parrys’ dugout home and had
stayed for hours probing Sue gently. They sat out in the moonlight under
a cottonwood tree, out of hearing of the children in bed. Beaumont had
slipped away into the darkness, knowing that his mother could speak more
freely if he were not there, and they let him go.

“Anything you can tell me will be of use, Mrs. Parry,” Jonathan said
gravely,

“Maybe I better go, too,” Stephen said.

“Nof” Sue cried. “What for need you go, Stephen? Fve toF you ev’ything,
many a time.”

But still he sat apart from her a little, upon a stump and in the shadow
of the tree. In the river not far away the frogs croaked. Beneath their feet
the grassless bit of earth was as hard and dry as a floor. Stephen worked
under this tree by day, and the family ate here, and here the children
played.

And then after a silence Sue began.

“Whafil I say? I wasn’t a fieF hand, Mr. Jonathan. My motheh was
Bettina, and own maid to Miss Lavinia, who was Pierre’s motheh. Fm
more’n half-white-my fawtheh was Miss Lavinia’s brotheh, suh. My
motheh grew up in a great house just like I did. We hadn’t anything to do
with otheh niggras, even hardly in the house, ’ceptin’ to eat with ’em. But
my motheh didn’ even eat with ’em. We just pieced along wherever we
were, so’s we needn’t.”

“Then Beaumont is nearly white,” Jonathan said.

“It’s the black bit that counts, though,” Sue said bitterly. “Don’t mattah
that his brains is white or that his skin is light and Ms hair brown. Why,
Beaumont could pass for white if he went away fum us.”

“He must go away with tMs money,” Jonathan said.

Stephen’s voice came deep and melancholy out of the darkness under
the tree, “Honey, don’t let him try to pass. It’s like a man gets out of jail

THE TOWNSMAN

Some’eres deyll fin’ Mm and put Mm back again, and then be cain’t stan’
it.,shoV’

'^Wbat was tbe wab for?” Sue asked.

There was silence and the soft , full tbroatiness' of the frogs, and the
moonlight as white as a mild sunshine; and then Jonathan said, trying to
be natural, ''If you could tell me the circumstances of-of your relationship
with Beaumont’s father, it might help me later. That is-if force was used
—if you were cruelly treated—”

“No, suh,” Sue said sadly. “There wasn’t any force, I guess— unless you
could say a slave would always feel sort of forced by her young master
if he toF her to— to— let him come into her room.”

In the shadows the darkness that was Stephen stirred a little, but he did
not speak.

“My motheh brung me up wrong,” Sue said suddenly. “She used to tell
me, ‘Ef a white man wants you, you go to him. Any kind of a white man
is bettah than a niggra. A bad white man is bettah than a good niggra,’ she
said. 'Don’ eveh let a niggra touch you, you hyeah, Sue? But when a white
man wants you, you say, “I’m cornin’.”’”

“You nevah tole me dat, Sue,” Stephen moaned out of tbe shadow.

“I know it,” she said. “I didn’t tell you ’cause it ain’t so, that’s why. I
know it ain’t so. Any kin’ of a niggra is bettah than a white man that wants
a niggra girl. That’s what I found out for myse’f. My motheh was wrong.
She said, ‘The on’y way we can git out of bein’ niggras, is by changin’ our
blood. Ev’y niggra woman with a white man’s chile in her is steppin’ up
and up and gettin’ away to freedom.’ But that was befo’ the wah showed
us different. It showed us that liberty don’t make us free. We’re always put
back where we was— black blood to black blood.”

“Oh, Lawd God!” Stephen moaned out of the shadows.

Sue said, “I thought Pierre loved me— he toF me he loved me. Once he
said he’d even maybe marry me and go no’th, and we could say I was
Spanish. And I was sixteen and believed him ev’y word he toF me. He was
eighteen— maybe he believed himself— I don’ know. But when Beaumont
was bawn Pierre was th’oo with me just like that.” In the moonlight Sue’s
hand was raised and her thumb and finger snapped and her hand fell
again. “And OF Marster come and said to my motheh that she must marry
me off to a good niggra, and he gave her money and two new dresses, and
when she toF me I said, ‘I want the blackest niggra man in God’s worFF ”

“That’s me,” Stephen moaned.

“That’s you, I thank the Lawd,” Sue said. She got up and went over to
him and stood by him and he clasped his arms about her strong waist.

Jonathan turned away delicately, “Now I know. Good night, and I
thank you both.”

And so he had gone away from them, leaving them there together in
the shadows.

Now in this office he sat and waited. He would have said he could wait

170 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

easily enough for, anything if- needful^ : but this , waiting made him angry.
Twice' he had. come here in the last two days, only. to,, be put .off ' until today,
. and . he had during the days seen a good deal that he did not like. This
city was beautiful and ugly. The Negroes and poverty made the ugliness,
and white gentlemen and ladieS' and their luxury made the beauty. Negroes
stood in the presence of the white, and they stepped quickly aside out of a
white man’s path. An old man had so stepped out of his own way yesterday
and when he said as he would to anyone, “I ask your pardon,” the aged
black man had only looked frightened, as though he had been spoken to
by a lunatic. A beautiful city with mansions and gardens and flowers grow-
ing among moss-hung trees, but he smelled the air foul as he sat' stiffly in
the office,'.' dressed in his best brown ,suit, waiting, though the room was
empty.

At last a young Negro manservant came in, his hands Ml of letters.

''Mr. Bayne’s ready for you now, suh,”. he said, ' holding the door open.

Jonathan rose quickly and went into an office where everything, it
'...seemed to him, was covered with a snowdrift of open letters, documents,
and newspaper. At the table sat a tali, black-haired young man with his
coat off and his feet on the table. He was so handsome that Jonathan’s
anger changed instantly into shyness.

' ^Morning,” the young man said In a gay voice, but without getting up,
‘■'Come k. I hope you don’t mkd seeing the junior partner. .FmHvan Bayne.
Mr. Bartlatt’s pleading a case.” .

'Tm glad to see anyone,” Jonathan said.

The young man laughed as if he would laugh at any possible excuse,
"Lawyers always keep clients wmting,” he' said. "WeTe taught that in law.
school.”

The impudence of this made Jonathan speechless. He sat down and
for a moment looked stem. Evan Bayne did not notice it. He was lighting
a long thin brown cigar.

"Have one?” he asked.

Jonathan shook his head.,"! don’t smoke,” he said, "and if you please,
Mr. Bayne, I should like to proceed to my business. I am a schoolmaster
and my duties begin on a date which compels my early return.”

Evan Bayne brought his long legs down from the table nimbly.

"Sorry, sir,” he said, and with quickly moving, supple hands found by
some miracle a letter upon which Jonathan saw his own handwriting. Evan
Bayne studied it, Ms dark straight eyebrows drawn down. He looked serious
for a moment. Then Ms mobile face changed. His black eyes sparkled,
and Ms right eyebrow flew up.

"You’re from Kansas! Fve -always thought Fd like to go there. Say,
what’s it like?”

"I only know what Median’s like,” Jonathan said carefully,

"Well, what’s Median like?” Evan Bayne demanded.

!■

THE TOWNSMAN

He put his feet on the desk agam, and Jonathan felt his gaze like a warm
light 'Upon him. .

“It’s not much now,’’ he said. ‘In fact,, it’s not a town you’d pick to
go' to. Fm there because my father brought us all over from England.
They’ve all gone to the West, but Fm the staying sort. It doesn’t seem any
good to me just to keep on going somewhere.”

“You’d find it hard to get many people to believe that,” Evan Bayne
laughed at him.

“Median’s not too bad,” Jonathan said. “It’s at a crossroads north and
south, east and west, and there’s a river-small, but it never dries up. The
wagons all come through.” ;

“They do?” Evan Bayne took his feet from the desk again and sat up.

“I’ve made a sort of plan in my mind for Median,” Jonathan went
on, “not that it’s anything of my business, but I like planning for something
to grow, and Median can grow, I think.”

“Does the railroad go there?” Evan asked. His eyes were brilliant, warm,
sharp, and shining.

“Not yet,” Jonathan said.

“Any reason why it shouldn’t?” Evan demanded. “There’s another road
projected through to the coast, south of the Union Pacific to Denver.”

“No, reckon not,” Jonathan said slowly.

They had both forgotten altogether why he was here.

“Go on,” Evan Bayne said, “What’s your plan?”

Jonathan pulled his chair to the table and drew a pencil and envelope
out of his pocket. In the envelope was Judy’s last letter, but he did not
notice this. He turned it over and began to draw.

“See, here’s the square,” he said, “a fair big square, and my pupils
planted it full of trees this year. Over here’s the general store, and here’s
the inn. There’s empty land to the west and east. Down here toward the
south is my house— schoolhouse, too— and here’s four or five other houses.
Down here’s Parry’s, carpenter he is, and whatnot— and over here near
the river is the mill.”

“Farmers come in from a long way?” Bayne asked.

“Thirty and forty miles, and sometimes more,” Jonathan said. “Now
this spring we put in boardwalk around the square— mud’s fearful in the
spring. That’ll come out one day and macadam go down, if macadam’s
as good as I hear on Kansas bottom. The square we’H keep as a park, but
put the town hall in the middle, and the post office here, and the new
schoolhouse here. Then ofi from the square will run the streets, like this—”

He drew a Median he felt he knew as well as the one that stood there
now, and Evan Bayne watched him,

“Say,” he demanded, “how do you know all this is going to happen?”

Jonathan, looking up to meet doubt, felt a flare of defense for his town.
“There’s enough folks there now to make it happen,” he said. “The land
around is rich, and there’s no town for miles for farmers to go to for

172

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

speEding, their money;, and, besides, there’s the : wagons. Why, all spring
and.sniBmer there’s been a dozen and tw^'O dozen wagons a day around
the inn.”

Any lawyer there?” Bayne asked.

“No lawyer, no doctor, no church,” Jonathan said, “and need for all”

Bayne laughed. “You’re persuading me,” he said.

“No, Fm not,” Jonathan said quickly. “If I am, it’s not meant I know
very well how Median looks to a stranger. When , I first saw it it seemed
to me a mudhole in the prairie and the prairie nothing but a green desert.”

“But you don’t feel so now?” Bayne said.

“And I can’t tell you why I don’t,” Jonathan said frankly, “for it was as
muddy as ever this spring, and winter was long and bitter, and a fire swept
away the autumn grass so fuel was scarce and dearer than gold, and for
five months nobody came near the place. But the prairie doesn’t seem a
desert any more. I’ve grown to like plenty of sky overhead. And though I
live in nothing but a sod house, I teach school in it, and there’s no other
school in two hundred miles for those children to go to. I keep thinking
there’s no reason why Median shouldn’t grow.”

“I am persuaded,” Evan Bayne said with gaiety.

“Never say I persuaded you,” Jonathan retorted.

“No, I won’t. The truth is, I was three-fourths persuaded before you
came. Fm sick of this office. It was my father’s. He’s dead but his old
partner isn’t, and I have to jog along with him. I want to get out on my
own. But I can’t do it here—too many old family associations.”

They sat for a moment in silence and in that silence Jonathan found to
his surprise that he liked this young man exceedingly. He had never seen a
man in his life that he liked so quickly and so well. There was something
about him that was frank and open, tempestuous, humorous and unaf-
fected and swift. It occurred to Jonathan that he had not a single man near
his own age with whom he could be friends. It would enrich Median for
him to have such a young man as this there, a man educated and able to
argue with him about everything and able to be his companion as no one
in Median was able,

“I daresay Median would grow faster if you were in it,” he said with
a glint of a smile.

Evan Bayne burst into his loud musical laugh, “It would grow or bust,”
he cried. He leaped to his feet and put out his hand. “I’m coming,” he
declared. “At least, I think I’m coming. When are you going back?”

“As soon as my business is done,” Jonathan said, smiling now very
broadly.

Up shot that fluent right eyebrow on the handsome face before him.
“God, that’s right— what was it? Never mind, consider it done!”

“No, not until you know at least what it is,” Jonathan said, and by his
gravity compelled the young man to his seat again. Then he told Bayne
all that Sue had told him and what Beaumont was and how he had

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173

written to old Dr, Beaumont, and what the letter from Bartlatt had said,

Evan Bayne sat turning a quill pen over and over in his hands, his eyes
downward, listening. ''Everybody knows that young Pierre Beaumont was^
rotten,'’ he said. "I call him young but he. wasn’t young. He was' forty
when he was killed last winter, but he’d never done' anything but live off
the' old .man. .The old gentleman was good— a wealthy man who needn’t
have done a day’s work, but he was a great surgeon because he wanted
to be. The son was nothing.”

"Killed?” Jonathan inquired.

"Murdered,” Bayne said shortly, "by a niggra. It was patricide.”

, "No!” Jonathan cried.

"Yes,” Bayne repeated, and then told him how Lem had died. "I heard
that the crowd was gathering at the prison-house gate, and, I went to see
the sheriff. Old Dr. Beaumont was our client. Bartlatt always had him, but
I knew ail about the case, of course. Dr. Beaumont wouldn’t prosecute. He
had a long talk with Lem in jail, and when he came out he looked sick.
'My son’s dead,’ he said, 'but I make no charge.’

"Well, the state had to prosecute, of course. But the people took things
in their own hands. I was there in the crowd, and 1 saw it was going to
begin. The crowd was too quiet. If they sing and yell you can hope to do
something with a crowd, but not when they’re quiet. They hanged Lem.”

"But why— if the state was prosecuting?” Jonathan demanded.

"A black man can’t kill a white man here and be sure of living to be
tried,” Evan Bayne said simply.

"I shall never tell Beaumont,” Jonathan said in a low voice, "no, nor bis
mother either.”

He rose and stood looking down at this man he liked. "You see how it is
—this lad of mine’s three-fourths white. He’s no darker than a Spaniard—
nothing so dark as an Indian. And his lips are thin and his hair barely
curly. And there’s genius in him. If we could get him somewhere to a
place where in a crowd he could mingle— if I could get him to England,
say— he’d grow to be a great man. You can feel it. If I could get him to
England I’d write a man there I know— my old teacher, he is— and he’d see
to him and get him on.”

"But he’ll always be a niggra if he comes back here,” Evan Bayne re-
minded him.

"Maybe by the time he’s ready to come back, things’ll be different here,
too,” Jonathan said.

"Don’t build on that hope,” Bayne returned. "Black will be black, and
so will black and white be black, as long as memory lasts in this country.”

"I will hope, nevertheless,” Jonathan replied steadfastly. "And if I am
wrong, then he can stay abroad. There are other countries.”

They looked at each other, doubt meeting hope until doubt gave in.
Bayne smiled.

'T like you,” he said without shyness. "Fve never liked anybody as

174

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

mucii at 'first Bieeting— who wasn’t a woman, that is,” he added miscMe“
vousiy.

' And lo'nathan, though he felt himself .blushing and knew his face was so
■crimson he was ashamed of it, forced himseif again.st his shyness, and an-
swered, ‘‘I like you in the same way.”

'^My name’s Evan.”

**And mine’s Jonathan.”

coming to Kansas with you.”

^Tm glad of that ”

They clasped hands warmly and firmly and Evan stood up. **When are
you going?” he asked.

^‘As soon as my business is done,” said Jonathan, twinkling' at him.

*'Oh, God, again!” Evan cried.

They laughed together, and Evan said, “See here, I’ll manage it for you.
ril tell old Bartlatt he has to give in— not a legal leg to stand on. I’ll tell him
the boy’s pure white.”

“No, that you must not,” Jonathan said instantly. “You must tell him
the truth.”

Bayne was laughing again. “What— and I a lawyer?”

Then he had Jonathan in confusion and not knowing how to put aside
this joke. So he gave over.

“I won’t tell that particular lie,” he said. “Now go on and be content. I
won’t tell you how I’ll do it, but I’ll do it for you. When do you start?”

“Tomorrow?” Jonathan asked,

“Day after,” Evan said. “I have to make it right with my mother and
my sisters.”

“Very well,” said Jonathan.

“And dine with us tonight, so they can see you and trust me in your
company,” said Evan, with that quick laughter brimming up again. He
scrawled a name and a place on a bit of paper as he spoke.

“I will, thanks,” Jonathan said, taking it.

They shook hands again and parted, each content with the other and
secretly astonished at the speed of their friendship.

At half past six Jonathan stood before a big cream-painted door in an
old brick house and struck the brass knocker. He had walked from his
small hotel through streets of shops into streets of houses, and at last into
this quiet wide street where large old houses of brick or painted white
wood stood, set in vine-draped, moss-hung trees. Every home had its fiower
garden, and he walked along a path lined with flowers to this door. It was
opened by a black manservant who said gently, “Come in, suh, if you
please,” and took his hat.

The door opened into a hall out of which a wide staircase swept up.
And then Evan came hurrying out of an open door, looking very handsome
in fresh garments. He should have changed his own clothing, Jonathan

THE TOWNSMAN

175

thought raeftdly, but he had only these, and he had put on his last' clean
shirt this morning. '

'‘Come in, come in!” Evan cried. "I knew you’d be on time, so I was,
too. I could see you’d be the sort of fellow who was always where he said
he’d, be at the time he said he’d be.” He clapped Jonathan on the back
and whispered, "Your business is done!”

"How did you—” Jonathan began.

"Hush!” Evan said. "Didn’t I tell you not to ask? Come in— my mother’s
here and the girls are all titivated at the idea of a new young man. You’re
English, now remember, Jonathan-not a Yankee. You’d never get in this
house if you were a Yankee!”

This he poured out, upon. Jonathan in his bantering musical voice, his
eyes mischievous and his mouth playful and the right eyebrow dancing. One
hand had Jonathan’s .coat lapel and the other, was punching him gently' in
the 'ribs.

"Evan!” a clear voice .called.

"Coming, Mother!” he cried.'

His arm through Jonathan’s, Evan marched into a big oval drawing
room where a small red-haired lady sat on a green tapestried chair, ' her
feet crossed on a stool before her. Behind her was a tall pretty girl who
looked like Evan, and a smaller younger girl, not yet out of her childhood,
who looked like her mother.

"This is Mr. Jonathan Goodliffe, Mother,” Evan said.

Mrs. Bayne put out a little hand so abruptly that it seemed a thrust.
"You’re welcome, Mr. Goodliffe, This is my elder daughter Laura, and
this is Louisa. ” . '

The two girls bowed, the tali one gently and the small one slightly. Mrs.
Bayne withdrew her hand as quickly as she had put it out. For the moment
it had touched Jonathan’s it had lain in his palm like a dried leaf.

"Sit down,” she said. “My son tells me you are English. Do you live in
London? I know London very well My husband’s father was a famous
barrister there, and I went to visit In his house as a bride on our honey-
moon,”

Her voice, so clear and all the consonants soft and the vowels length-
ened, was nevertheless imperious, just as her tiny feet in black satin slippers,
though crossed upon the stool, seemed not resting there but merely waiting
to ran.

"I don’t know London, ma’am,” Jonathan said, seating himself on a gray
satin sofa. "My home was in a village near Blackpool, a small village it
was, and we came here to better my father’s conditions.”

"I hope they are bettered for being in Kansas, but I doubt it,” Mrs.
Bayne said with soft sharpness,

Evan laughed. "That’s for me, Jonathan. She thinks me a fool.”

"I don’t, because you’re my son,” Mrs. Bayne retorted. "But I think
going to Kansas is silly, no matter who does it.”

1.76

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Evan laughed at her and bent to kiss her, but she poshed him away
with her hand.

you’re not to kiss me. You think you caii 4o as you like and then
come and kiss me, and Fll forgive you. But I won’t forgive you!”

She spoke playfully, and yet there was something in her that was not
playful, and Jonathan felt it. But if the girls felt it they said nothing, and
if Evan felt it he was still gay.

' *'Lef s say Fm only going on a visit, Mother, or a trip or whatever it is
that young men do when they finish their education.”

“If your father hadn’t died, you’d have taken the grand tour like a
gentleman,” she said.

“Being an excellent and patriotic American, Fll go West instead,” he
replied.

“It’s not the same,” she retorted.

All during this gay battle that was not altogether gay, the two girls stood,
Louisa smiling a little and Laura not smiling at all. She was, indeed, looking
at her mother furiously, and at last her mother seemed to feel this look
and she turned her head.

“Laura, go and tell Jeems to have dinner,” she commanded,

“I’ll go,” Evan sprang to his feet.

“No, I!” Laura said eagerly.

They met at the door behind their mother’s chair, and Jonathan saw
that meeting, merry enough, but meaningful, for Laura put her arms about
her brother’s waist and gave him a great squeeze and Evan pulled one of
her short red curls. And Louisa, behind her mother’s chair, smiled at them.

“Sit down, Louisa— you make me nervous standing behind me like that,”
Mrs. Bayne said, and Louisa sat down on a seat by the window.

AH through the evening Jonathan felt those three pulling at Evan, each
in her own way. Talk was gentle, there was plenty of laughter, and Evan
was constantly teasing one and the other of the three; but underneath there
was the pull of love too sharp and diverse for ease. Jonathan, saying little
and listening much, saw how Evan, without knowing he did it, continually
watched the three women. When one was silent, he turned to her, and
somehow one after the other and together he seemed to be talking to each
and to all. It made Jonathan think of a juggler he had once seen on the
green in Blackpool on a holiday, who kept three plates whirling in the
air at once so skillfully that none struck anotiher and none fell to the ground.
And yet throughout the meal, anyone would have said here was a home of
plenty and ease where all was well with the people in it. The light fell
softly from a chandelier above the table, and long windows were open
from ceiling to floor, and a small night wind cooled the air. The food was
well served and more delicious than he had ever eaten in his life— a turtle
soup, very thick and smooth, young chicken fried brown with a creamy
gravy, biscuits, and new peas and a lettuce salad and an orange pudding.
And yet with everything there was the underplay of love pulling this way

THE TOWNSMAN

177

and that between the three against one, though it' was , strongest between
Louisa and her mother, and Laura, took the smallest part in it. So It went
on. until Mrs. Bayne rose and the girls followed her and left him and Evan
together, and the black manservant put wine and nuts on the table. Then
the strain went away with them, and Evan sat silent for a moment and he
looked tired.

“I miss my father,’’ he said.

' ‘Tt is inevitable,” Jonathan replied, merely to make an answer.

>T never knew how we all leaned on him until he died,” Evan said.
And then he looked at Jonathan with all his gaiety gone. ‘*Do you think I
should stay with my mother and my sisters?” ■

Jonathan was taken back. “How can I tell?” he replied. “Is there another
man in the family anywhere, and do they need your support in money?”

“Louisa is engaged,” Evan said, “and will be married in June to an old
Mead of mine, and live next door, almost. And we have two uncles here
and their families— hundreds of cousins, more or less. And my mother
doesn’t need money. And my God, but I need— freedom!”

He whispered the word. Jonathan nodded.

“I know how it is,” he said soberly. “I love my own mother and grieved
when she went away, and yet Fm happier. There’s not something deep in-
side pulling at a man all the time if he’s alone.”

“Exactly,” Evan said. He poured out wine for them both. He lifted his
glass. “Here’s to you and me and Kansas,” he said, and drank. Gaiety
came back again, and Jonathan drank and knew that another part of his
life was begun.

The journey back was more of a jaunt for Jonathan than anything he
had ever had. Evan made it so by his very presence. To have a young man
only two years older than himself his companion, and such a companion,
so seeing and full of talk about all he saw, so amiable in his quick eagerness
to share every good, so courteous even in the narrowness of their cabin
upon the river steamer in which much of their journey was made, was to
make every moment pleasurable.

Whatever Evan’s parting with his mother and sisters had been, he told
Jonathan nothing of it. They met at the quay, Jonathan there early with his
one carpetbag, and Evan leaping out of his carriage at the last moment
with two Negro boys carrying four bags and two boxes of books and a
carryall.

:-l,78

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■Evan glanced about in mock fear. won’t be easy until Fm sure old
Bartlatt’s not here to grab me,” he said. never knew I was so indispen-
sable to the firm! I thought I was an office boy, dirt under the old fellow’s
spats, or a' nurse,, a niggra,' anything' but an indispensable junior partner.
But I ' was wrong.” ■ ■

He took off his tall hat and wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief.
The boat whistled and a mulatto roustabout rattled, the gangway, Jonathan
had been standing with his hand on the rope watching for Evan.

*^Cast off there!” a loud voice shouted.

They hurried aboard, the two Negroes pushing and pulling Evan’s bags
and boxes. “’By, Marse Evan-’by, suh! We sho’ hopes you don’ like
Kansas!”

Evan flung some money to them. “Goddamn you, Pete and Solon, of
course Pm goin’ to like Kansas! Get along home and mind you take good
care of things!”

“Yas, suh!”

They ran off. The gangway was lifted and that good journey began—
good, because every day the two young men liked each other better
and talked more freely of all their lives. Jonathan listened more than he
talked, while Evan told him of the travels he had made, the girls he had
loved, always gaily and lightly and never very long. And yet there was a
sweetness in this young man which drew out of Jonathan, too, his owe
story. But he did not speak once of Judy. He kept her for himself.

As they came to the end of the journey and Median was only two days
away, Jonathan found himself uneasy lest he had made Median better than
the truth. It was hard for him not to see Median as in thought it would
be some day. When they left the train and began the drive across the
prairie he found himself still more anxious. Evan was staring across the
prairie,

“My God,” he said, “does it simply go on and on like this?”

“It does,” Jonathan said.

“Not a hill nor a rock,” Evan said.

“Never,” Jonathan answered, “at least not until you go far westward.
The land slopes upward, but you don’t see it unless you see the long horizon
ofTt.”

“Good land, though, if it grows this grass,” Evan said.

“It’s said to be,” Jonathan said cautiously.

Evan glanced at his profile, “You don’t care whether I like it or not,”
he said.

“I do care,” Jonathan replied, “but I will not persuade. You see what
it is for yourself.”

So at last they came to Median. The sky was gold in the west, and even
the east was Ht with that western light. Median was so set that, coming into
the town from the east, they saw between the few houses across the empty
square to the west; and, since there were not yet any houses except north

THE TOWNSMAN

179

and south: of the square^ Median was like a gate to the west at sunset.

It looked well tonight. Mrs. Drear had washed the flag that flew from, a
pole on American House, and it fluttered, red and white and blue, and the
store had new cloth, in the windows, and Katie had picked a great bunch
of grasses and , put them in the middle in a big green bottle. Around the
doorways of the dozen or so houses late sunflowers grew, and Mrs. Cobb
had asters from seed she had brought from her home in New England.
There had been recent rain, ' for the young trees in the square were ' green
and so was the grass growing under them.

Evan pulled at the reins in Jonathan’s hands. “Stop,” he, said,' “let me
look at it.” He gazed ahead. “Not much of a town,” he said. “But what
a West beyond!”

“Ah,” Jonathan said, “you’re like all the rest.”

He picked up the reins and drove across the grass to the sod house. He
was depressed by the thought that Evan might not want to stay in Median
after all, but he determined not to show it. Let him stay or go, he
would manage for himself, and in Median.

In the twilight the sod house looked as small as a hut, and the garden
in front less than nothing in the long wild grass all around. Jonathan opened
the door in silence, remembering the house from which Evan had come.

“It will seem a poor place to you,” he said. “But here is where I live
and work.”

They stood together a moment, and while Evan looked about Jonathan
looked at Evan.

“It looks comfortable,” Evan said.

“I’ve found it so,” Jonathan replied.

He lit the oil lamp. It was one of his luxuries, because it had enabled
him to read at night with more ease than he would have had with a flicker-
ing candle. In the yellow light he seemed to see for the first time how his
home, grown as familiar to him as his mother’s face, might look to a
stranger. He saw small things he had not noticed— the scars his pupils had
made on the unpainted table, Abram Hasty’s initials cut there in one end,
the unevenness of the board floor, the leaks from the roof which had
washed streaks in the whitewash, holes burned about the fireplace, the
meagerness of his chairs and his garments hung upon pegs on the wall.

“I shall have to go to the store for some food,” he said. “Will you come
or stay?”

“Stay and wash oE some of this dust,” Evan replied.

“Tii have to fetch water first,” Jonathan said.

“Then I’ll help,” Evan replied. Still in his long brown frock coat and tall
hat, he took up one of two buckets and Jonathan the other, and they went
to Drear’s well.

In the door of the store Katie stood with the two little boys and watched
them.

“How are you, Katie?” Jonathan called.

180

AMERICAN ■ TRIPTYCH

Katie replied, Still Staring.

''Thafs one of my former pupils,” Jonathan said, pulling the windlass
rope.

“I trust she’s no fair sample of Median girls,” Evan replied io. a low
voice. ,

‘‘There aren’t any girls here,” Jonathan said.

“Now that you should have told me,”' Evan said teasingly. “That’s
important.”

“You should-” Jonathan began, and stopped. What he was about to say
was “You should see Judy,” and he changed his mind. There was no reason
why Evan should see Judy.

Two and the school was too much for the sod house, Evan said. Seven
days had passed, and each day Jonathan felt Evan as uncertain In Median
as a bird in passage. He himself had spent the rarest week of his life until
now, and he knew it. Not even Judy had given him what Evan gave him-
the constant gay resourceful companionship of a mind more varied than
his own. If Evan felt lack of ease and comfort, he never spoke of it or
indeed seemed to notice it. He ate salt meat and river fish and boiled po™
tatoes and com meal in bread and mush as though it were what he would
have chosen to eat, and when Jonathan picked fresh beans from the garden
Evan made them a treat.

In the week Evan had come to know all of Median, always gay and
seemingly careless and always able at night to talk shrewdly with Jonathan
about each one he had met.

“Drear’s a man to tie to,” he said, “and so is Merridy. Hasty is an ig-
norant low fellow, and Cobb is from stock run thin. He’s left New England
too late. But his wife’s different stuff, and she’s put good strong blood into
the children, though the weak will come out sometime or other.”

But what won Jonathan was that Evan joined altogether in what he
thought of Beaumont. Beaumont came to see him the first morning, dif-
fident and yet hot with eagerness to know what his fate was. He arrived
at the door when the two young men were eating breakfast and waited.
Jonathan saw him there when he came out for water to wash dishes.

“Come in, Beaumont,” he said. “I have good news.”

And to Evan he said, “This is Pierre Beaumont.”

The boy bowed, and Evan, his hands full of dishes, did not need to greet
him except by a nod and a smile. “Hello,” he said.

“Good morning, suh,” Beaumont replied,

“This gentleman, Beau,” Jonathan said, looking with affection at Evan,
“is the one you must thank. He is the one who, in some way or other which
he will not tell me, settled your case for you.”

“I thank you, suh,” Beaumont said. He was light enough to fiush, Evan
saw. In France he could pass as a Frenchman.

“You must go to Paris, you know,” he said lightly. “I can see you

THE TOWNSMAN

181

there, growing very French, and all that-not England, Jonnie, "after ail,
but Paris!”

“I don’t know anybody in Paris,” Jonathan said with doubt. '

‘^You’re not the only man in the world,” Evan retorted. “Let me re-
mind you of myself. I happen tO' know some Beaumonts in Paris— second
cousins of the old gentleman. He had me look them up' once when I was
there with Mother after my father died. We took her abroad.”

“Fve never heard of any solid folk in Paris,” Jonathan said.

“They run a nation, somehow,” Evan replied, laughing.

iTve never seen a Frenchman, though. .How do I know what Beau
f ' * might grow into there? Besides, they might not be good to him.” .

“They’d love him,” Evan declared. “A bar sinister is their joy.”

Thus they argued until Jonathan saw the boy’s dark eyes look afraid.
Then he stopped it

“Oh, well, we can decide later,” he said. “The thing is, you’ve your
legacy, Beau, and Mr. Bayne got it for you, and you’re going to be a
surgeon.”

Beaumont listened and took this into his mind, opened his mouth,
closed it again, and shook his head.

“I thank both you gentlemen,” he gasped and rushed out of the room.
They went to the door and saw him running and leaping through the grass,
not homeward, but out toward the open prairie.

Evan laughed aloud. “Precious little niggra there, certainly.”

But Jonathan did not laugh. He perfectly understood that Beaumont was
crying as he ran. He would run crying until he was exhausted, and then he
would curl down into the grass and sleep. And after he had slept he would
come back, and then they could plan.

“Paris is right, you know, Jon,” Evan said, looking after that leaping,
flying figure.

“Perhaps,” Jonathan said. At this moment he too could not imagine
Beaumont in London. “Well, we’ll see what we must,” he added reluctantly.

“Paris is a good town, you know, Jon,” Evan said, smiling.

“Is it?” Jonathan retorted without believing him.

Evan burst out laughing. “Oh, Jon, I swear I love you! Do you mind
my calling you Jon?”

Jonathan felt himself red from head to foot and answered therefore
with utmost calm, “You can call me that,” he said, “though until now
Fve never let anyone call me out of my name.”

Once, dreaming of Judy, he had thought she might want to call him
Jon, later, when they were married, perhaps. But let Evan have the name
if he wanted it In a day or two Evan had made it seem more natural than
any other. Jon— when he heard it Jonathan felt quickened and brightened,
a gayer fellow and more able to put down his conscience.

So now when Evan said, “Two and a school is too much for a sod
house,” Jonathan was frightened.

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AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

"^Yoti’ie leaving Median,”' he said slowly. “I knew you would-ifs not
big enough for you.”

‘I’m' not leaving,” Evan replied. “Fm, only deciding to build myself an
office. ' If !1 be an office, but Fil live in it, too, and you and F!1 see what we
can do. Why shouldn’t Median be the county seat? Drear says they’re going
to split this county into two. A county seat, and then we’ll get the railroad
to come this way, and no reason why Median shouldn’t grow to be a city
as big as Chicago some day. I believe in planning big.”

“Ah,” Jonathan said, “that makes you sound like my dad. But you’ve
got more wisdom than him. He’s always talking bigness, but he never does
anything to bring it about. But I don’t know as I want Median to be like
Chicago.”

“You won’t be able to stop it once I get started,” Evan said.

He began it by moving into American House on the day that Jonathan
opened school. Next door to the inn he bought a square piece of land
from Henry Drear and contracted with Stephen Parry to put up a two-
story frame building, one room on top of the other, the one below to be
his office and the one above his home, the whole to be finished in two
months.

Meanwhile, he paid Henry Drear ten dollars a month for his storeroom
cleaned out except for a table and two chairs, and under the new eagle
which Drear had put up after the fire had burned the old sign, Evan nailed
a neat block he had drawn and painted himself, “Evan Bayne, Lawyer.”

To this sign, as sinners approaching heaven, came all those who were
discontented with their neighbors, and those who had been cheated in land
claims and mortgages and by cattle thieves, and many so troubled. But
Evan seemed never to be busy with what he did. All day long he sat in his
office, his feet on the table, listening, laughing, shouting to someone pass-
ing the aiways-open door.

Everyone in Median liked him. If Jonathan had been able to be jealous,
he might have been now, for everyone went to Evan and claimed him for a
friend. But Jonathan could not be jealous. Besides, sooner or later each
night Evan would stroll down the boardwalk to the sod house and come in
and help Jonathan at whatever he was doing. Sometimes it was midnight
before he went away again.

Those were good hours. In them they planned for Beaumont, and they
sent him away one day, dressed in Evan’s own suit of drab broadcloth.
It was a little tight on Beaumont’s broader frame, but their height was
equal enough, and Beaumont, with his hair cut close, looked a gentleman.

“Never say you are a niggra,” Evan told him. “From now on, forget
anything except that you are returning to the land of your ancestors. And
leam French until it is your mind’s language.”

The boy took everything into his heart and went away, his purse full of
money and his few clothes in Evan’s best bag. No one else in Median
except Stephen and his mother knew where he was going, or indeed that

THE TOWNSMAN ■ |83

ho was gone. To have said “Paris” as a ' destination would have seemed
madness, and Evan and Jonathan agreed not' to let it be said. ■

These two young men, sitting in' the moonlit darkness of the door open
to the prairie through the mild evenings of early autumn and by the fire
when autumn deepened, shaped their world to their imagination. They
were made to work together, Jonathan often thought.

“Now what we need-” Evan would begin, and Jonathan listened.

When his turn came he would begin, “The first step we must take
is—”

And in argument and argument and argument again before they parted,
Jonathan forgot for hours together what distressed him when be was alone
—that Judy did not keep her promise to write him every week. If Evan
thought of his mother and his two sisters, he never spoke of them to
Jonathan.

Stephen Parry, working overtime on Evan Bayne’s house, had most of it
to do himself, for labor was hard to find. No one wanted to stop to lend a
hand at a house on the prairie when land was to be had farther west, and
the eastern markets were opening for all the cattle the West could muster.
He had a week’s help from a Pennsylvanian whose wife gave birth to a
child at American House before they went on. Mrs. Drear took time to be
midwife and start another lusty boy westward. “That’s the ninety-sixth,”
she said proudly. Stephen had a few more days from a man who had lost
his wife in childbirth; then they, too, went on. The Hasty boys did crude
labor when their father could spare them, but the best help was from
Matthew Cobb. Matthew was growing into a tall thin boy whose squeaking,
broken voice made a joke of him, but he was able to put his brains to
what he did and fit a joint and nail a beam as well as a real carpenter.
For the first time he found something to make him content with Median.

“I like wood,” he told Stephen. “It’s clean and dry, and there’s no muck
when you work in it.” Even after the sod-house school began, Matthew
spent his other hours at carpentering for Stephen. It was now accepted
that the Cobb family was to be a part of Median. Mrs. Cobb was planning
the making of a new house near the store.

Judy had only once written to Jonathan every week for three weeks
together. Of his letters she had one for every week and one other which he
wrote in the overflow of his heart at Thanksgiving. After he had taken a
great deal of thought, he put down what the year had brought him for
which he thanked God. These two gifts, he told Judy, would be always tiie
two best parts of his life whatever else was to come. The first was Judy
herself— “My dear, my love,” Jonathan wrote, “whose least little look i
have as my treasure, and every touch of your hand my precious memory.”
After Judy came Evan, “my friend,” he wrote Judy, “a clever, honorable,
man. In him are the best qualities a man can have, such gaiety as my
own father has, but not in Evan joined to rashness and heedlessness; such

184

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

honor that he will do anything for a friend, as Indeed he has for me;
clever, because he has come to Median and in a few weeks he has won a
name that makes anyone whom he takes sure of winning the case. His
office, only newly opened in his new house, is already full, and he talks of
enlarging it. He can persuade anyone to anything.”

Jonathan sat alone as he wrote, for Evan was giving a great dance at
American House that Thanksgiving night. Jonathan was only waiting until
the hour to go to it; and, feeling thankful and buoyant and full of sure hope
for the future, he put down in words the warmth of his heart. Evan had
made him less prudent than it was his nature to be, and he had come
twice as quickly to writing these words as he would have had he never met
Evan.

*^My dear darling,” he wrote to Judy when he had written the two
causes for his deepest Thanksgiving, ‘ffiow I am ready to ask you, will
you be my own wife? I have missed you so fearfully these months. Darling
Judy, I do not reproach you for writing me such a few letters that in all
these weeks I have only eleven. When Sunday comes and there is no new
letter from you, I sit down and read the old ones again. But we must have
it so that we are always together and then there need be no blame if letters
are not written.”

When he had written this he stayed for a while feeling very solemn.
Much must be done if Judy was to come into this house as bride and wife.
The school, for one thing, must be moved. He would talk it over with
Evan and see if by issuing bonds there could be collected enough money to
put up the schoolhouse he had planned on the side of the square nearest
the church that was not yet there.

He rose and walked back and forth once or twice; and then, happening
to glance at the face of the school clock hanging on the wall above the
fireplace, he saw that if he did not make haste he would be late for what
Evan had called his ‘‘shindig.” He hastened across the moonlit square to the
tavern. It was bright at every window. Though the night promised frost,
the door was open, and from it came the sound of voices and laughter and
dancing feet He went to the door and stood looking in. Everyone was there
who could drive a farm wagon to come. Small children not yet asleep ran
about or clung to their mothers’ skirts. When sleep overcame them they
would be laid on a mattress somewhere. Every face was gay, A childlike
lovable folk, Jonathan thought, and loved them. Yet he wondered, curious
at himself, that he could not ever cast prudence aside and be as childlike.
Was it only the childlike, perhaps, who left hearth and home somewhere as
these had and went westward without knowing where they went?

Evan swung past him in the dancing. He was dancing with Katie, and he
saw Jonathan and paused for a moment, his arm still about her. “Well,
Jon! I was about to send somebody for you!” he shouted.

He was so handsome, his dark eyes so clear, that Jonathan took fresh
pride in him. Even Katie, in the effulgence of Evan’s beauty, height, and

THE TOWNSMAN

health, was nearly pretty. She wore a pink dress he had never seen before.
Her shoulders were bare, and the skirt ruffled to the floor.

. “Why, Katie!’’ he said.

, “Isn’t she fine?” Evan , cried.

.“Change your partners!” Bill White’s voice rang out. Bill White, .long
ago too fat to dance, played a banjo and called the dances.

Evan made a large gesture. “Here, Jon-Fve been keeping her for you,
the youngest and prettiest girl in Median!”

He bowed deeply and handed Katie to Jonathan and went away. Ion-,
athan saw him a few minutes later not dancing but leaning over the bar
talking to a strange man; a cattleman, he guessed, by the man’s leather
trousers and open collar. There was an increasing number of , cattlemen
now coming through Median, rough noisy men who drank too much and
swaggered about the store and the tavern.

Then he looked down at Katie. She was dancing sedately to the new
tune Bill was plucking, her thin little face quite grave. In his hand Jonathan
felt hers lying passive and without pressure.

“I don’t dance as well as Evan, I fear,” he said ruefully. Evan had
taken away with him the small glow she had seemed to have.

“You dance all right, though,” she replied quickly. But she did not look
at him nor smile, and though he knew she had no coquetry in her, it
occurred to him that perhaps Lew had been wrong. Perhaps she had never
cared for him. They were too much alike, two somewhat grave young
people, too ready to think of work instead of play. What more right than
that she should rather love Evan when it came time? He examined her face
just beneath his own—a plain, regular little face, each feature well enough,
but the combination somehow lacking the magic for beauty. He thought of
Judy with sudden and enormous desire and knew that, for him, she alone
was beauty and there could be none other.

The music stopped, and he and Katie stood for a moment uncertain.
“Thank you, Katie,” he said and let her go.

He and Evan returned to the sod house when the night was near to
dawn. Houses were darkening as they walked back and wagons rumbling
out of the town homeward, sleepy children crying. Again and again Evan
had shouted, “Good night— good night all! Mighty glad you came, mighty
glad!” Each time, Jonathan thought, listening, his voice was as joyous to
one as to another.

“Grand folks,” Evan said, sitting down at last in Jonathan’s most com-
fortable chair. “Mend your fire, boy— your house is as cold as a cave. I shall
be staying the night with you, Jon. I’m as full of talk as an egg of meat.
Don’t hope for sleep, for you shan’t get it.”

“Well, tomorrow’s a holiday, luckily,” Jonathan replied. He reached
for the bellows as he spoke and blew the embers red and built corncobs
above them skillfully and the flame burst out. Evan sat sprawling in the
chair, his feet to the blaze and his hands locked behind his head.

AMERICAN , TRIPTYCH

' “JOR,”' he said suddenly, ‘‘Fm going to make Median a cattle town.'' ■

Jonathan, on his knees, held the bellows. “Evan, you ' didn’t tell that
chap— I' mistrusted he was a Texas rancher!”

“I did,” Evan said. “Why not? Why shouldn’t Median have their
money? American. House would profit, the store would profit, it would
bring all sorts of business in.”

“But the trail’s end is too far north,” Jonathan said slowly.

“Median would bring it two days nearer the railroad— we’re going to
■have a railroad,' Jon.”

Jonathan put three pieces of wood on the fire, sparely and so that the
fire would catch them all. Then he rose, dusted himself, and sat down on a
wooden stool.

“And where would Median be?” he demanded.

“What do you mean?” Evan retorted. “There’d be more Median than
ever!”

“There’d be lunch wagons and dance halls, and American House would
be a saloon, and there’d be brothels and fightings and killings— there
wouldn’t be any room for Median.”

“Why, you son of a gun,” Evan said, laughing. “Median would boom!
There’d be thousands of men paid off here if this was the shipping point,
and the men would leave their money here.”

“Yes, and what else? Tick fever for every cow around and bad diseases
for our own folk, and sicknesses worse than that for us all. No, Evan!”

Evan brought his chair down with a crash and his hands from behind
his head. “Jonathan, you’re not serious!”

“I am,” Jonathan said.

“Why, it’s the law of growth, man! You can’t stop the sources and
expect Median to grow!”

“Maybe you and I don’t see Median the same,” Jonathan said.

“Maybe we don’t,” Evan said. “Maybe you don’t see Median a prosper-
ous city, bigger every year, drawing money into her banks, business into
her stores, sending goods out all over the West, an exchange between the
two halves of the country. No reason why not, when we are geographically
almost the exact center of the nation! And you and I, Jon, could be any-
thing we liked— governor, senator— anyway, rich men.”

“I don’t want to be rich,” Jonathan said shortly.

“You certainly don’t want to live in a sod house aH your life, Jonathan!
You don’t want to live miles from a railroad and use candies and oil lamps
all your life and draw water out of a well like— like Abraham did!”

“I want a good town,” Jonathan said stubbornly. “I want a town with a
schoolhouse in it and a proper church. Business, of course, but not the
brawling, cursing, fighting sort of business cattlemen bring in.”

“What’s going to bring in business, though, Jonathan? You can’t just sit
and expect it to come! You must hold out some promise!”

“Median’s in the middle of a lot of good land,” Jonathan said soberly.

THE TOWNSMAN

187

‘‘Stands to reason solid farm folk laave to buy and sell somewhere and put
their cliildren in school and have fairs and meetings. They’H; move to town,
when they VC' done well enough on the land and get old, and they have
money to spend, too, as well as cattlemen, and better money.

“But well be gray-headed before Median gets anywhere!” Evan cried.'

“Itll be solid when she gets there and- good going the whole way,”
Jonathan declared,' “The sort of town a man would w^ant to settle in and
bring, up his family,” he added. . .

The two young men looked at each other, their faces clear Jn the fire-
light. Evan laughed.

“You’re in love, Jonathan!” he said, not suspecting he had hit truth.

“Yes, I am, I own it,” Jonathan said simply, “and I speak out of al my
thoughts about what’s most valuable to me.”

“Why, who could it be, Jon? There’s nobody here—it’s not little Katie
Merridy!”

“No, it isn’t,” Jonathan said, growing red. “It’s nobody you know, Evan,
though I’ve been going to tell you a long time. It’s a young lady I’ve known
a year now and fell in love with as soon as I saw her. Her fSjther’s an
evangelist and she’s in California, and I wrote her today asking her to
marry me and posted the letter tonight.”

“And have you reason to hope she will have you?” Evan asked, his eyes
merry and full of affection at the same time. How impossible not to love
this Jonathan, he thought with tenderness and impatience!

“Yes, I have reason to hope,” Jonathan replied.

He sat there with his hands on his knees, looking so innocent in his
determination that Evan grew quizzical.

“And so ail of Median is to be shaped to you, is it?”

“Not to me,” Jonathan replied, “but to the thing that’s best.”

“And suppose I don’t agree?” Evan asked.

“Then I reckon we’ll have to see who of us can win,” Jonathan said
calmly.

“Well, Fm damned,” Evan said.

In a tall narrow house in Paris, Beaumont was feeling his way. He
was like a blind man. Nothing he had seen before helped him here, beyond
the ordinary objects in a room. That is, a chair was to sit upon, a bed was
to sleep in, the stairs were to climb up and down from the room he shared
with Georges, his second cousin. He had not yet dared to call Georges

188

AMERIGAN , TRIPTYCH

cousin, though Georges introduced him proudly at school as “my cousin,
Pierre, from America.” Once in^ an excess of honesty when the two of
them lay awake in their cots after Marie the maid had put out the lamp,
Beaumont said, “I ought to tell you, I reckon, Georges. My mother-was a
slave.”

What he had wanted to say was, “My mother is a Negro.” But he could
not. It was easier to say “slave.”

To this Georges answered in surprise. “But what is it? All slaves are
now freed in America. My father says it is so.”

Pierre did not reply at once. Then he said, his temples beating, “She
is—not white, you know, Georges.”

“And what of it?” Georges asked. “I once saw a black man in a great
carriage on the Champs Elysees. There were ten carriages following him,
and he was dressed in red and gold, and he wore on his head a gold turban
with a white cockade with diamonds as big as apricots. He was an African
prince, and he was also French.” Georges yawned. “Pierre,” he said with
sudden interest, “did you see that fat boy who pushed me today pui'posely
as we came from gymnastics? Tomorrow I shall push him twice as hard,
and with all my strength. He is a German sausage, that boy!” Georges,
two years younger than Beaumont, ground his teeth together in the dark.

Beaumont laughed and then fell silent. Between Georges and him were
years never to be shared. He could never share entirely with anyone
what it was to come here where no one cared what his race was. At first
he felt Georges’ parents must be pretending when they said he was to call
them uncle and aunt. “Though we are only your cousins, dear Pierre,”
Georges’ mother said kindly, “it is more suitable, since we are so much
older, that you say *mon oncle* and *ma tmte* It is fortunate, dear Pierre,
that you have come to us, since we have only our Georges, and some-
times he is lonely with only elderly parents. We married too late, and now
it only remains that you learn to speak our language quickly, so that we
may be a happy family. English we cannot,”

He was learning to speak French very quickly. He was glad to change
even his language. He wanted to change everything. Perhaps his very skin
was changed now that people did not call him a Negro. But he was not sure
of his complete change until nearly a year later when he met Michelle
DuBois. This meeting was stffly polite, in the narrow gold and white
drawing room. Madame DuBois was Georges’ aunt on his mother’s side, a
widow who lived in the DuBois house m the country. Once a year, at New
Year’s, she came, with Michelle, to spend the holiday in the city with her
sister. Georges had talked, a little and carelessly, of Michelle, as a brother
might speak of a sister.

“She’s a nice girl— rather pretty, but a girl!”

But Beaumont, coming forward to bow as Madame Beaumont had taught
him, saw a young angel, whose fair curling hair, cut in bangs over a white
forehead, was a cloud of gold about the heaven blue of her eyes. When he

THE TOWNSMAN

189

toiiclied her hand Ms heart spilled out. of his bosom and lay at her feet.

Two days later they had declared their love secretly to each other.

“But I am so dark, Michelle!”

.'“But you are so handsome, mon Beau!”

From that day on he was Beau to Ms beloved

Across the mountains in San Francisco Judy read Jonathan’s love letter,
put it down on the bureau, and went on brushing her long, softly waving
bright hair. She sat before the bureau in her full white petticoat and cami-
sole and watched herself thoughtfully in the splotched min'or. The room
in wMch she had been living for several months was neat and even pretty,
because she always succeeded in making her rooms so. Thus, over the
blistery top of the bureau she had spread a clean hand towel and upon
the bed a crocheted spread of her own making. Joel’s room next door, with
exactly the same rough furniture, had none of the same air.

When she had brushed her hair to a flying mass of electric life, she sub-
dued it with her comb and curled it about her fingers. Then she pinned
the curls carefully to the back of her head in a waterfall and, rising,
slipped under the full skirt of her gown hanging from a hook on the door.
A smooth slide, a graceful undulation of her body, and her head came
through the low neck, the curls undamaged. The gown was a yellow muslin,
a fall of ruffles from her bosom to the floor, with a ribbon sash at the waist.
She had made it herself, hemming the ruffles with fine stitches. It had been
the work of her whole summer, but she considered it worth ail the hours
she had spent upon it. She dampened a scrap of turkey-red cotton cloth
in the jug on the washstand and touched it to her cheeks and lips, and
then she dusted her face and neck and arms with cornstarch. The gown
had a small reticule of muslin. Into it she put her cornstarch bag, her
handkerchief, and then Jonathan’s letter.

Thus frocked, she tidied her bureau, touched her ears and bosom with
perfume, and knocked on her father’s door.

“Come in!” Joel shouted.

She went in and found Mm at the window frowning out over the bay.

“I’m ready now, Father,” she said. “Capt’n Lusty will be coming for
me any minute.”

“You made up your mind?” Joel asked sharply.

“No, I haven’t,” she replied quietly.

Behind him his room was in its usual disorder. Almost as though she
were unaware of what she did, she began to straighten it.

“The truth is, Father,” she said, hanging up Joel’s snuff-brown coat
tidily, “the Capt’n hasn’t spoke of marriage,”

“He will,” Joel declared. “If you manage right, Judy, so he’ll know he
ain’t goin’ to get what he wants by any sinful means and he’ll be compelled
to righteousness. That’s the way God works.”

190

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Yes, Father,” Judy replied. She was sorting Joel’s shirts, clean from
soiled. “And whaf 11 yon do, Father, if he doesn’t give in to God?”

“It’ll be kind of hard to know,” Joel replied. He sat down and put the
fingers of his long, thin, never-clean hands together. “I reckon I’ll just have
to search the Scriptures.”

There was a loud thump on the door, and a boy’s voice shouted,
“Capt’n Lusty’s downstairs!”

“Good-by, Father,” she said, as nearly in haste as she ever spoke.

“Good-by,” Joel said, without looking at her or without changing his
frown.

Judy, moving smoothly down the narrow corridor of the rooming house,
went down the stairs with the same gliding steps, holding up her skirts on
either side. She knew how she looked to the tall man waiting for her in the
hall below and was content without caring enough to be vain.

“Well, my beautiful,” he said in a hearty voice when she had reached
the last step.

“Good evening, Capt’n Lusty,” she said, putting out her right hand. Her
middle finger was rough with stitching, and he felt it as he put her hand to
his lips.

“Why, what’s this?” he asked, examining it.

“I always stitch my finger when I hem ruffles,” she said, and smiled so
innocently that he felt a swirl in his head. There was no one else in the
hall, and he slipped his hand around her shoulders. His fingers were in the
soft warm pit under her left arm. They sent shattering messages to his brain,
and he was lost.

“I’m going to kiss you,” he muttered.

She did not speak, but she swayed to him gently and closed her eyes.
Upon her full warm mouth she felt his kiss without returning it. It was, she
reflected, pleasant enough— too moist, perhaps, but men’s kisses were usu-
ally so. She allowed him to continue it for a second more and then opened
her black eyes wide. The sight of those eyes, so close to his and so direct
in their gaze, spoiled the kiss for Captain Lusty. He was not able to go on,
and he straightened himself and laughed unsteadily, still conscious of his
fingers in their warm nest. ^ ^ ^

“You’ve about got me,” he remarked.

She moved a little without any appearance of repulse, and he found his
arms empty.

“Shan’t we go?” she asked.

“You want to go?” he countered.

“Weil, I want to see the ship,” she said. “I’ve never been on a real sea
ship. They’re not like river boats, are they?”

“They are not,” he retorted scornfully.

She put her hand in his arm and by an imperceptible pressure guided
him to the door.

THE TOWNSMAN

, 19 . 1 ,

«I know,” slie .said with a fresh, urging eagerness. '^Thaf s' what I, say~I
want to see how a real ship is, and how folks live on it.”

Outside the door '.a cab waited. Captain Lusty handed her into it, leaped
in, and' then thrust his' head out of' the window, ■

^^Ahoy there!” he shouted to the driver. ,'*Get along back to the docks
where I picked you up and stop alongside the Virgin Queen”

'The cabman grunted and they set off. Captain Lusty sat back. While
he dressed himself for the evening in his cabin he had thought persistently
of the possibilities of this half-hour, alone in the cab with a beautiful, child-
ishly innocent glii. But now he was aware only of her dark eyes and of
how queer they had looked just under his-eyes too big and too black. She
was chattering along, sitting gracefully erect as the cab lurched over the
rough street.

“Oh, Fd admire to see the Sandwich Islands,” she was saying earnestly.
“Seems as if I never hear enough when you talk about them!”

Captain Lusty took her hand and fondled it. “You’ll come with me
maybe, eh, Lady, some day?”

She let him have her hand, she even smiled. But when she spoke it was
with simple gravity. “If it’s God’s will, Capt’n Lusty,” she said.

He put her hand down. “You’ve a real discomforting way of talkin’,
sometimes,” he said.

“Do I?” Judy asked, surprised. “But I couldn’t do what wasn’t God’s
will— you wouldn’t want me to, would you, Capt’n Lusty?”

Captain Lusty swore to himself in a mutter.

“^af s that, Capt’n Lusty?” Judy asked.

“I said, Goddamn,” he replied.

She laughed, and in the flickering street lights he saw her lovely face
suddenly quiver and grow warm with amusement. She was laugbing at
him! All these months when he had been wanting her she had perhaps been
laughing at him. Flying back and forth between Honolulu and California,
he had thought of nothing but her ever since one day on the street she had
asked him where to find a store. He had gone with her that day, thinking
her easy in her virtue. He still thought her easy. When he was away from
her he was sure of it. And yet, though she had allowed him to kiss her
sometimes, she had allowed no more— not, he felt wrathfully, from re-
fusal so much as lack of interest in lovemaking. And yet he could not be
mistaken in a woman who had mouth and eyes like hers.

He sat up, Mi of sudden dignity, and made no effort to touch her. After
all, he was the captain of a good vessel, and a well-to-do and successful
man, and what was she but the daughter of a crazy traveling preacher? He
had said carelessly, “Come and preach in Honolulu, man— there’s lots of
sin there,” and Joel had lit as though a fire had been kindled in him.

“Maybe that’s what God means, always leading me westward,” he had
exclaimed. . . .

“Here’s my ship,” Captain Lusty said suddenly.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

: T^q she was, , her weU-toown' lines trim and sharp' against the Mill-
bright; sky. The cab stopped. He got out and paid the fare, then, taking
: Judy V hand with ceremony, he led her to the gangway. A sailor standing
on the deck saluted and stared at her.

“All well?” the captain inquired.

“All’s well, sir,” the sailor replied, “and the others are waiting.”

There were others, for Judy had refused to come alone, and he had been
compelled to invite his mate and bid him bring his wife. “But clear out,
you hear,” he had said carelessly. “Aye, sir,” the mate had replied, thinking
of the gold piece that was his when he obeyed his captain.

And Judy, following the captain and caring nothing for the stares to
which she was so accustomed, was full of pure pleasure at everything she
saw. In the saloon she dimpled sweetly when she bowed to a gray-haired
woman with a hearty red face and a man whom the captain introduced as
“my mate, Mr. Briggs, and Mrs. Briggs— my thanks to you, Mrs. Briggs,”
he added.

“My pleasure, Capfn,” Mrs. Briggs said demurely, without looking at
Judy.

It was all pleasant, Judy thought. The dinner was delicious— guinea hen,
which she had never eaten before, and wine, which she tasted and did not
drink. They laughed and the others told stories at which she laughed and it
was all delight until suddenly the Briggses were sent for because their little
boy was taken ill.

They went so quickly that she scarcely knew them gone, and then she
was alone with Captain Lusty. And yet not really alone, she told herself,
for there were the sailors and the steward.

“Take the coffee and dessert to the cabin,” Captain Lusty ordered that
steward, and he rose and put Judy’s hand in his arm.

“We won’t part for dessert, since there’s only the two of us,” he said,
and she went with him doubtfully, and yet saying to herself that she must
go on if only to discover what God’s will was. Besides, there was so much
she had not yet seen about the ship.

The moment she entered the cabin she knew it was wrong. The devil,
not God, had led her here. Behind her the Captain shut the door. His hand-
some face was red, and his hand trembled as he took up the coffeepot.
Judy’s eyes, flying about the small luxurious room, fell upon a photograph
standing on a shelf below the mirror. It was the picture of a woman, a
delicate fair face, with sad eyes and a small sad mouth,

“Who is that?” she asked.

“That’s my wife,” Captain Lusty replied.

And then she knew that indeed she should not be here.

“You never told me you were a married man,” she said.

“You never asked me,” he retorted. He put down the pot he was hold-
ing and turned on her. “You never asked me an3rthing, my dear.”

“Because I took you for an honorable good man with right intentions,”

THE TOWNSMAN

193

she ' said In a whisper of horror. It occurred to her how narrow was the
path to salvation for her-only, , indeed, that bit of a plank between her and
the shore.

''Dear God, save me/’ she said aloud in simplest tones.

“It’s a little late for God,” the Captain replied, smiling. He went up to
her and put his hands on her warm bare shoulders. “A little late,” he
repeated, and slowly moved his hands down her arms and back again and
into the two pits under her shoulders, and then he lifted her sharply.

And she, in solid horror, hung limp as a doll. She felt herself go cold,
and she suffered without an answering movement his kiss.

And he in the midst of that hot kiss saw those great wide black eyes
that had so disconcerted him before. They stared into his eyes so blank,
so empty of all feeling, that to save himself he drew back. Was the girl
crazy like her father? He shook her. It was like shaking a sack.

“Whafs ailing you?” he shouted.

“None of this is God’s will,” Judy whispered. “None of it, I say!”

“You’re mad,” he said, and let her go.

She sank down upon the seat, and panted, and felt in her little yellow
muslin bag. Yes, there was Jonathan’s letter.

“Fm engaged,” she said. “Fm engaged to a solid good young man that’s
asked me to marry him, and I never dreamed you were so wicked.”

“You don’t act innocent, so you must be a fool,” was all he said. He
rang a bell and when the steward came he said, “See that this lady gets
safe ashore, Tom.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” the steward said. He was astonished, but he did not
show it. He waited while Judy rose and passed through the door and then
led her to the gangway. It was there safely leading to the shore, and she
trod it as joyfully as any sinner ever looked toward heaven.

But her face was as innocent again when she entered Joel’s room.

“I came to say good night, Father,” she said.

Joel turned on her with eyes of solemn fire.

“Judy, Fve been on my knees since you went. God has bade me go
westward to the islands of the sea.”

She looked at him without moving. “Has He, Father? Then you and I
must part.”

“But J"Judy — ” Joel’s astonishment broke against the calmness of her
eyes.

“Fm going to marry Jonathan Goodliffe,” she said.

In the sod house Jonathan read the words again and again.

'Tor my mind is set, dear Jonathan, and it is to marry you.”

'■ 'Judy’s letter was short. Why should she write much' when she "was
starting at once for Median? The roads would soon be closed for winter,
and if she delayed it must be for months. And there was nothing more
to delay her. Captain Lusty she had swept from her mind as a woman
sweeps dust from a room before she closes the door upon it, clean and
empty. Judy had the gift for finality which was finality itself, so that she
saw no irony in Joel’s sailing for Hawaii in the Virgin Queen. None of it
now had anything to do with her. She had set about her own journey with
composure, and with growing pleasure.

I shall have something to call mine, anyway, she had thought after she
had written the letter, as she folded rufiied skirts carefully into a small
round-backed trunk. The trunk had been her mother’s, and of her mother
she now thought with pensiveness as she made quick, exact movements that
in so short a time left the room in which she had lived for months emptied
of her presence,

I must go and see Mrs. Drear, Jonathan thought Judyll have to stay
there a bit. His pale face reddened as he thought of Judy. She would be
here before Christmas. They would be married at once. What could he
do with his school? He pondered the possibility of persuading Henry Drear
to let him hold it in American House. It was impossible to have it here if
he and Judy were married. He wanted the house to himself, alone with
her. And Evan— Evan must be told, first of all. He leaped to his feet. Lucky
it was a Saturday, he thought, so he was not tied to his work. If he had
everything ready, he could wait better for her coming.

He found Evan, as he was always to be found these days, in his office
and surrounded by men. In the midst of them Evan sat smoking his pipe,
his feet on the desk, listening, laughing. It was hard to know whether the
men had business or were only there to talk. To Evan everything was
business. A man who came to talk might stay to tell him a grievance against
a neighbor that would develop into a lawsuit. Evan’s dark, warm eyes, his
easy laughter, his endless patience for listening, drew men to him. Lew
complained of it openly, with grumbling good nature.

“Doggone you, Evan, you’re takin’ away my trade. Fellers used to come
into my store to talk— then they’d buy somepin to take home to their
yoonguns. Now they stop at your door before they ever get here, and

THE TOWNSMAN

195

when you*re through with them they can’t afford to buy' a salt cracker offen
me*

‘Then Fli bring them,” Evan said. He did bring them, sometimes a
dozen at once, to buy a dipperfui of Lew’s homemade whisky. Just, often
enough to keep Henry Drear content, he took them to the bar at American
House, though there he went most often with one or two men, not farmers, '
but men from railroads and in the cattle business in other states. Together
they talked long in low voices, sitting at the corner end of the table.

But to Jonathan Evan was always the same. He said now as Jonathan
entered, ‘Tf s only fair to tell you, Jon, that we stand a mighty good chance
of being a cattle town!” He smiled his beautiful lazy smile at the men
sitting about his office, where there were always plenty of chairs and
spittoons.

Jonathan did not reply, Judy’s name was not to be mentioned here. He
came in and sat down. Evan introduced him casually. “This is my best
friend and warmest enemy, fellows. He agrees with me on everything
except how to make Median a big town.”

“Hell, nothin’ll do it quicker’n cattle,” the man cried.

“That’s what I tell him,” Evan said. His brown eyes upon Jonathan were
full of affection. “But he’s a stubborn son of an Englishman. He doesn’t
want you here, fellows,” he said. “I do. Want to bet on which of us is goin’
to win?”

“Bet on you, Evan,” a man shouted. “Yeah, ten to one,” another
growled, and spat his brown juice to the far side of the nearest spittoon.
Evan, who did not chew, had covered his floor with sawdust. Once a week
Sue Parry swept it all out and Stephen put it down new.

“These fellows are from ’way down in Texas,” Evan said amiably to
Jonathan. “The railroad’s certainly going to run south, Jon—I had their
promise for that when I was in Topeka last week. It’ll come through
Median if plans go right. It’ll sure come through if we make Median a big
cattle center. Sit down, Jon.”

“English, hey?” a man said to him, wondering. “Say, what’s it like over
there?” ■

“It’s another country,” Jonathan said dryly.

“Goin’ back?” another asked idly.

“No,” Jonathan replied.

He caught out of the air in the room, out of the slightly excited triumph
he could perceive in Evan, a feeling of immediacy. Before he did anything
else he must measure the speed of whatever Evan was about, and to do
that he must wait here and listen. But Evan was quick to discern him as
well. Between these two was something so close that neither could hide
himself wholly from the other. It made Evan want now to be away from
Jonathan’s eyes. He was not ready yet to tell Jonathan everything. When
he had finished what he was determined to do and had made it irretrievable,
he would tell him. He rose from his chair.

196

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

:''Come on over to Lew’s, you fellows/* he said lazily after a moment.

. “Fli buy you a drink.”

He let them all pass through the door and then he turned to Jonathan.
^'Anything you want of me, Jon?”

*‘Only to tell you Fm to be married,” Jonathan said. His voice was quiet
but^ weighted with his feeling, and to his own astonishment tears came into
his eyes. ‘‘I couldn’t speak before strangers,” he added.

And suddenly Evan was all he wanted him to be. He came back into
the room and &rew his arm about Jonathan’s shoulder and hugged him,
and his joyfulness was real.

‘7on! Is it Judy?” he cried.

''It could be no other,” Jonathan said solemnly.

"Oh, Jupiter, but Fm glad!” Evan was squeezing him and patting him
and now with his right hand he seized Jonathan’s hand. "Now Fli see her
and I shall tell her if she doesn’t make you a good wife, it’s I who’ll take
a hickory switch to her. You’d never beat your wife, Jon— you’re so soft-
hearted! But she’s got to make you happy— I swear she’s got to!”

There was an edge of breaking in Evan’s voice. He laughed to avoid
it. "Gosh, I— I— love you, too, you know!” he said.

Jonathan, dreading the edge, grew calm. "Thanks, Evan— and it’s only
fair to warn you, I s’all do all I can against Median’s being a cattle town,
now more than ever.”

"What? Oh, ail right!” Evan laughed. Tie clapped Jonathan’s shoulder.
"Go on, man. Don’t forget the odds are ten to one against you, though!”
He ran out of the door and after the men now sauntering down the board-
walk toward the general store.

And Jonathan, looking after him, thought to himself that his work lay
ahead of him. He must see every man in Median before Evan could reach
him and tell him what it would mean if Median were a cattle town. Henry
Drear would be for it, because American House would prosper. But Drear
had no sons, and Jennet was gone. He would not waste time on Drear. He
would begin with family men like Cobb and White and the Irvings, who
had just come from Illinois, and the Bennetts from New York State. They
all had big families. He went out into the cool sunlit noon and turned his
steps toward White’s house. Judy would have to wait while he made a home
for her.

Evan said, “We’ii put it to the town.”

There was not the smallest seeming difference in his manner toward
Jonathan. The last few days might have been, for all he showed otherwise,
a game between them. A grim game, though, Jonathan thought as he
looked at Evan with his quiet blue eyes. It had come to be a race between
them as day went mto day, to see who was to be first at the scattered farms.
A few times they had arrived together at a lonely dugout or sod house.
Then each had been scrupulously fair. Turn and turn about each had stood

THE TOWNSMAN

to let the other one go in first Neither inquired of the other what ' had
been said. But Jonathan came to know fairly well which would be Evan’s
men and which Ms. What he called ‘^solid folk” were on Ms side, men who
came determined to farm and . to stay, who wanted to send theii' children
to school. Jonathan found that to these it was best indeed to begin by
talking' about the school If Median were to be the proper town he wanted
it to be, the sooner he got a schoolhouse built, the better it would be.
Bonds were the thing for it, he thought. He had first thought of bonds from
hearing Evan talk about issuing railroad bonds. If men paid for railroads
in such ways, why not a schoolhouse?

Thereafter when he went into a farmhouse he put the matter 'first of
ail thus: ^Tm the schoolteacher in Median. I see you have school-age' chil-
dren here. Would you want to send them to school?” ■

It was more often the woman than the man who spoke, “Sure we want
’em to git schoolin’.”

*T dimno,” the man said. “I can’t get along ’thout the boys’ help.”

“You can get along as good as I can ’thout the girls,” the woman cried.
“Anyway, we can manage. How much would it cost, mister?”

“Well, it depends,” Jonathan said in his slow, plain manner which
always made what he said seem the voice of truth. “A doUar a month is
the regular, but I’m thinking of a schoolhouse. We need it. My little sod
house can hardly hold another pupil. Anyway, Median ought to have a
schoolhouse. Would you feel to put something in it? I’d be willing to take
half my price and put the rest into the building, if so be you could add
to it”

“I ain’t got cash,” the man would say more often than not, “but I could
put in labor.” Or he might say corncobs or hay cats for fuel, or a team
for hauling, or rarely, if he lived along a stream, a few trees for wood.
Most often of ail were notes on next year’s harvest. “If it’s a fair harvest,
I could let you have maybe fifty or even a hundred dollars.” After that it
was easy to talk about the sort of town Median ought to be. Jonathan at
the end of two weeks and a day had his pockets full of such promises,
written upon pieces of paper.

“Fm willing to put it to the town,” he said to Evan. “That’s fair enough.
And I’ll tell them about the schoolhouse at the same time.”

“Will you want your school in a cattle town?” Evan’s mischievous eye-
brows flew up at Jonathan.

“It isn’t going to be a cattle town,” Jonathan said calmly, and smiled
when Evan laughed.

The first town meeting of Median was held in American House. Evan
had been quick to say, “Your schoolroom is too small.”

“So’s your office,” Jonathan had replied.

Each refusing the other the advantage of his own ground, they had

198

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

agreed ' EpOE the big room, in the tavern. Drear, all. for Evan in the matter,
"Was hearty and wiiiing.

' ''Fli stand to treat everybody twice around free,” he declared. ''Though
if Fd known what a crowd there’d be,” he declared the day of the meeting,
"Fd have thunk twice,”

Jonathan himself was secretly surprised to see the number of people
who came in to Median that cool December day. It was a day such .as
early winter ' may give on the prairies, a day mild and without wind at
morning ' and evening. At night anything might happen. The wind might
rise and' bring winter in by the next day, or' a sodden rain set in and turn
the', earth to , its old bottomless mud, and this would freeze until spring. As
though they knew it might be their last fair day, every family within horse
distance and return came in, their food in baskets, and women with babies
in their arms.

Evan and Jonathan had discussed together how they should begin.

“We must have an order of talk,” Jonathan said. “There ought to be
some sort of head to the meeting.”

They had looked at each other,

“You’d be better than me, and I know it,” Jonathan said. “But all the
same, I shan’t yield you the advantage unless I can see reason.”

“Don’t blame you,” Evan had said carelessly. “How about lots?”

Jonathan stooped and picked two leaves from a scrubby bush and put
them in his hat.

“Red leaf’ll begin, yellow leaf’ll wait,” he said. “Fair?”

“Fair,” Evan agreed.

He turned his head away and put his hand into Jonathan’s hat and drew
the red leaf.

“Fair?” he had asked Jonathan.

“Fair enough,” Jonathan had said Steadily.

When the people gathered in the tavern on this day long before noon,
Evan stood up first and Jonathan sat waiting and watchful.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Evan began, “friends all--” He went on. The
natural friendliness of his brown eyes grew warm. Faces turned toward
him, and he let his eyes grow warmer. “Jonathan Goodiiffe and I have
taken a mighty big responsibility on ourselves in asking you to come, some
of you a mighty long way. But he and I have two propositions to put
before you, and since it concerns everybody the only fair thing seems to
be to put it to all of you folks and let you decide. We drew by lots who
should talk first, and that’s why Fm doing it.”

He let his eyes pass from face to face, lingering upon each long enough
to catch response. Then he went on.

“We each of us maybe see Median in a different way, Jonathan, here,
sees one kind of a town. I see another. Folks, here’s my town. It’s more
than a town—it’s a growing, busy, prosperous city. It’s a railroad city-
trains come here from the East, taking cattle and grain from all over the

THE TOWNSMAN

199

Southwest. These trains will come back again to bring us manufactured
goods of all kinds. There won’t be sod houses and dugouts in my town.
There’ll be fine houses and schools and churches, and big stores and hotels.
We’ll be a great center, we can be, because we’re on a thoroughfare east
and west, north and south. We’re the center of the great country west of
the Mississippi. Now, folks, a city doesn’t just come because you whistle
for it. You’ve got to make it come this way. Money must be spent here,
business attracted. And our great chance is the cattle business. All the cattle
regions can head up here. That means thousands upon thousands of dollars
spent here in Median. Men will get paid off here, they’ll have money to

^ Jonathan, watching the faces before him, saw hard, fearless eyes, firm
mouths, hands rough and misshapen with work. There was scarcely a soft

face even among the women. j +•

“What about saloons?” a white-haired woman spoke from the end of a
bench. She had refused the drink Henry Drear had offered her. Evan

turned to her at once, his face full of sympathy. , , j

“Madam, I know what you mean, but we can do what we want to do
about that,” he said. “Nobody can make us do what we don’t want to do,
not in this free country. We can put the cattle concession away 0“ ^t “e
end of the town, if we like, far enough off so that the cattlemen wiU distort)
nobody.” Evan’s face grew solemn. “Madam, we can do more th^ that
We can make Median an ideal cattle town, a place where men wiU grow
better rather than worse. We can refuse to license—

HeiS Drear broke in. “Hell, Evan, if you won’t sell licenses, where s

your money goin’ to come from? , , j

“That’s risht Henry,” Samuel Hasty’s high voice cackled.

A^?i SefbeSn at once. Evan let them talk and stood at ease
listening to one, catching a few words from “°*er fom^how makm^^^^^^
feel he was heard. From the confusion his ear sorted any aid to himselt.

When he found it he raised his voice. „

“Here’s a man with a good idea. Stand up, mster, and te ^

A man would .tout out, “What I say is, why should w' “
place get the business? What I say is. get the busmem, let s tok

Lout how to run it when we’ye got it-if. too good = chance «
After an hour Jonathan could endure no more of it. He and Evan had
aied tom hour each. Evan had talked less, but by the sfallfullest
trickery-“for trickery it is,” Jonathan said to himself "

repeaSg what he wished to repeat from what was being ~ ^
shouting and crying down each other. He was m^mg

they wanted was the cattle business. Upon some f^^f^Js^ere
lucy wcuAv ’em!” but others were

ins. Men and women cried out, We uonx wan ^
tpivina and Evan did not hear them. In the confusion of the room He ry
Drear bad long since forgotten that he was treating only two rm s

person.

200 ■ ^ AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

; . Jonathan rose. His ■ was never a conspicuous figure, and nobody now
saw tiie neat young man- of middle height as he stood' in the back of the
tavern. Jonathan waited a moment to catch Evan’s^ eye; and then, since it
was "Hot to be caught, he walked across the room toward the bar against'
which Evan leaned as he stood, smiling, listening, talking, ' ■

^'Your hour is up, Evan,” Jonathan said clearly.

Evan looked surprised and took his gold watch from his pocket. '

*'So it is,” he said. '"1 thought it only about half gone. But, Jon, you
won’t hold meto it? I thought it only'fairto let people speak for themselves.
I haven’t half said—” ' ■ ■

shall stick by our bargain,” Jonathan said.

pound of flesh, eh, Shylock?” Evan’s eyes, still smiling, sparkled too
brightly.

/‘If you like,” Jonathan said doggedly, meeting those eyes full.

They looked at each other, and in the moment the room fell silent.
Everyone was staring at these two young men. Evan gave up gracefully.

“Oh, all right, Jon,” he said. “Folks, this is my friend the schoolmaster.
He’s on the other side of the debate and wants to keep Median the way
it is!”

A roar of laughter provided for Evan the opportunity to bow and stand
aside. He did not sit down. Jonathan waited, but still he did not sit down.
He continued to stand gi'acefully aside, his face humorous, his eyes
afiectionate.

“Go on, Jon,” he said cheerfully.

He was going to stand there, as a guide to people’s opinion. They would
look at him and see him taller than Jonathan, far handsomer, quick to
laugh, to look tolerant and scornful, as a man of business looks at a
schoolmaster.

This Jonathan perceived. Then he put it aside. He stood without leaning,
and with his hands in his pockets he began to speak in the quiet rather
colorless voice of his usual conversation. He addressed them by no name,
but he looked from one face to the other as he spoke. Some he knew, some
he did not.

“ ’Tisn’t that I want to keep Median as it is,” he said. “In fact, I don’t,
as Evan very well knows if he stops joking. It’s just that I see Median a
different kind of a town from a cattleman’s town. That’s natural, because
I think of my pupils— and all of them are your children, too. It’s no use
hiding from ourselves or each other what the money’s spent on in a cattle-
man’s town. Those men spend their cash on drink, gambling, and women.
They eat as little as they can, and they need little in garments. If we want
their money, we’ve got to let brothels come in and saloons and gambling
halls. The choice is a plain good town with a library and school and a
church and homes and shops, or a cattleman’s town. Theirs’ll be the town—
it always is. Our boys’ll grow up thinking it’s wonderful to ride horses and
gallop up and down drunk and shooting ofi their guns, and our girls’ll

THE TOWNSMAN

isave to stay indoors. And wtiafs the use of money to us if we have to
Eve ..In tliat way to get it?”

■ Jonathan’s quiet passioniess voice in the'' heated room was' like cool water.
^^Amenl” a woman’s voice cried.

■ ^^Amen—amen—” women’s voices echoed.

“The ladies commend you, Jon,” Evan said, his voice full of laughter.
Behind' his 'bar Henry Drear looked alarmed. “See here, fellows,” he
cried, “this hyere’s a man’s country!”

'■ Lew rose lumbering to his feet. But upon the tails of Ms coat two
women laid their hands. One was his wife, but the other was Katie, and
' Jonathan’s quick eye saw it

“What do you say, Lew?” he inquired.

But the two hands held Lew fast. He stood for a moment stubborn,
and then the eyes of everyone were fastened upon him in his predicament.
He was a florid man at all times, burned crimson with prairie wind and
sun. Now his face grew purple as he saw the faces about him grinning
at him. '

“Nothin’,” he muttered and sat down abruptly.

Around him the room bellowed with laughter. And on the surge of this
laughter Jonathan won his town.

“I hope you don’t let it come between us, Evan,” he said apologetically.
He had asked Evan home with him to eat bacon and mush. Evan had
hesitated, struggling against a wish not to go. Then he had yielded and
come. Now they were walking side by side along the boardwalk to Jona-
than’s house.

“Of course I don’t,” he said quickly. His dark eyes glinted. “What really
hurts me, Jon, is that it was the women who helped you win against me.
I had the men easy enough. There isn’t a man who won’t groan in his
heart this night at the good chance lost. But the women were for you, and
I’m hurt. I always thought I could win a woman, Jon!”

Jonathan smiled. This was the sort of banter he never could answer or
share in, but it showed him Evan unchanged. He felt his admiration
of Evan quicken. A big man, Evan was, and beyond any little grudging
envy. He could lose without loss of his own good nature,

“I never was so successful like that before,” Jonathan said, trying to
answer Evan in kind,

“I don’t know why you say that,” Evan retorted. “On your own word
you’re engaged to the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen. Of course I haven’t

seen her, but—” ^ ^

“You’ll say so too when you see her,” Jonathan said with gravity. “Not
that beauty’s the best of Judy, as you’ll find, Evan. She’s a solid good girl,
too— a minister’s daughter.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right,” Evan said teasingly. “But my point is, how
do you win them all, Jon? You’re a nice-looking fellow, but—

202

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

''Give over, 'do,” Jonathan said. He was always miserable under such
teasing. You’re ten times as much as me for looks, Evan, and well you
know it and so do L” ■

' *‘Not ten,” Evan said with mock judicial accuracy, **but maybe two times
—yes, ril go that far with you.”

Then he saw he was tormenting Jonathan and , gave it up with a great
laugh and a nudge of his elbow in Jonathan’s ribs. ‘^Oh, Jonnie,” he cried,
“I wouldn’t trade you off for all the girls in Kansas! If your Judy takes you
away from me, Fll' hate her. Promise me a wife won’t come between us!”

'*Judy’li like you as well as I do, Evan-I know that,” Jonathan promised
him. In his grave young heart he made his promise deeper. Never as long
as he lived would he forget that Evan was his friend.

Near the end of a gray day Judy stepped down from a wagon. The
cold had only deepened her pallor. Even the tip of her straight small nose
was not red. She accepted pleasantly the help the two men in the wagon
gave her with her bag and box, not seeming to notice that the other woman
struggled alone with her goods. The wagon held no family but only the
few persons who at this time of year had wanted to come eastward. Judy
had tried to talk to the hard-faced elderly woman, but had given it up. It
was always easier to converse with men, she thought.

American House stood solid and welcoming as she stepped down the
dry bare earth of the roadway and up a step to the boardwalk. Jonathan’s
trees in the square were beginning to look big. She saw everything sharply
because now everything in Median would be a part of her life. Then she
stepped into the tavern.

Mrs. Drear, bustling out of the kitchen, embraced her with floury arms.

“Goodness gracious, it’s Judy!” she cried. “Now I must send someone
straight off and tell Jonathan.”

There were men at the tavern bar, as there always were, and one of
them came forward instantly.

“Let me go, Mrs, Drear,” he said.

In the quick habit of her eye, Judy saw a handsome man, tall and young,
whose eyes were dark,

“I’d admire to be the one to go, Miss Judy. I’m Jon’s best friend— Evan
Bayne. He’s expecting you.”

He put out his hand, and she put hers in it an instant. Then she withdrew

it.' , , .

“Wait just a bit of a while,” she begged him. “I’m hungry and tired
and real cold.”

“Sure,” Mrs, Drear chuckled, “she wants her young man to see her
at her prettiest. Wait tiU she’s fed, Evan, I’ve got supper ready. Will you
have it in the kitchen, Judy, or right here?”

“Right here,” Judy sighed

Without seeming to see anyone she sank to the bench beside the table

THE. TOWNSMAN

203

and drew off her gloves and took off her brown felt hat with velvet' bows.'
Warmth, bronght hack to her cheeks their nsiial soft color, and her lips
were growing red again. ,

^'Had a hard trip, , Judy?” Henry Drear called from behind the bar.

. ^^The cars were dirty, and then the wind waS' cold, that’S' all,” she replied.

■ ''Want a nip?” he inquired.

"A little hard cider, please,” she said. She smiled up at Mm as he set
a small tin cup before her. ■

He inquired, "Where’s your paw?”

"He’s had a call to be a missionary in the Sandwich isles,” she, said.

Henry grinned, "Still goin’ west?”

She nodded, her cup at her lips.

"He’ll be cornin’ in here from the east one of these days if he keeps on
goin’,” Henry chuckled, and Judy smiled again.

She sat sipping her cider, seeming to see none of them, her head bent,
her eyelids demure; but they were ail watching her, helpless not to watch
her. Even Mrs. Drear stood in the kitchen door watching her, though she
was th ink ing of Jennet. She had not heard from Jennet in many months.
The girl had become lost in that West which changed and grew so fast
that in that growth it threw human beings from one chance to another,

"You didn’t hear tell of Jennet anywhere out there, did you, Judy?”

Judy lifted her great innocent eyes. "No, I didn’t, Mrs. Drear, and Fm
sorry.”

Mrs, Drear sighed. "Well, I didn’t expect it— it would be a needle in a
haystack if you did.” She went back to her kitchen;

Evan did not move as he watched her. He would wait, he thought, filled
with fury, until tMs girl had finished her supper to the last mouthful before
he went to find Jonathan. He hated her already, a selfish, cold woman,
thinking of herself instead of Jonathan. He thought of Jonathan with a pas-
sion of protection. Jonathan had been engrossed in this business of getting
the school out of Ms house so that tMs woman might have a home. It was
folly, and everybody told Mm so, to get the schoolhouse built before winter.
Ice froze already except in the middle hours of the day, and at any mo-
ment there might be a blizzard. The winter winds made work on a house
beyond endurance of frozen hands and cheeks. But for Jonathan’s sake
Stephen Parry was trying to do it.

"Your only hope is a temporary sod house, Jon,” Evan had said.

But Jonathan had shaken Ms head. "I shan’t put the bit of money I have
into something to be torn down in the spring. It’s not fair to the people
who’ve given it”

What does this girl care? Evan thought gloomily, staring at Judy’s beauti-
ful face. She doesn’t even hurry herself over her food.

It was true. Judy, always dainty at table, was daintier tonight than ever.
It was her only response to the eyes upon her, Evan made a deep bow
when at last she put down her spoon.

204

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Now, Mstdaoi, may I go and tell my friend tliat Ms fiancee has arrived?”

His voice was weighted with sarcasm, but' Judy only lifted her eyelashes
at Mm.

“If you please,” she said gently. Her eyes rested on him reflectively, and
Evan turned away and strode out of the door into the deep cold dusk. It
only made tMngs worse for Jonathan, he thought, to have her so pretty.
It would be very hard for a man to forget so pretty a woman. He walked
fast, thinking with melancholy how this was the sort of woman who would
demand every service of a man so that Ms life was consumed in trivialities.
And he wouldn’t even know it, he thought in a strange sort of terror.

He gave a great thump to Jonathan’s door and walked in. Jonathan sat
by his fire with a book in his hand.

“Well, Evan!” he cried.

“Judy’s come,” Evan said.

Jonathan dropped Ms book and leaped for Ms greatcoat. “I had a pre-
monition, not ten minutes ago,” he cried. He blew out the lamp and took
the lantern from Evan’s hand. “Here, I’ll carry this.”

“What sort of a premonition?” Evan set his stride to match Jonathan’s.

“A queer soft feelmg, as though something good had happened, though
what I couldn’t tMnk, for it’s been a day like any other. How is she? Does
she look well?”

“She looks well enough,” Evan replied, so coldly that Jonathan was
amazed.

“Evan, what’s up!”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not telling me something, Evan!”

“There’s notMng to tell,” Evan retorted.

“Then why—”

Evan stood still. “I don’t like her, and that’s a fact,” he said. They were
talking in the darkness.

Jonathan lifted the lantern and saw Evan’s stem face in the light of it.
“You don’t know her,” he said.

Evan saw Jonathan— too young, too good, he thought. What he wanted
to say was, “I knew her the minute I saw her.”

“Maybe I don’t,” he said instead, and they went on.

But he did not enter the tavern again.

“Come in,” Jonathan said to him.

“No, I’ve got a brief to write yet tonight,” he replied, and then he added,
“You don’t want me and you Imow it.”

Jonathan smiled at that and let Mm go. He could wait for no one, not
with Judy in there waiting.

At the sound of his voice at the door, Mrs. Drear motioned Judy into
the kitchen with her beckoning finger and came out and shut the door.

“She’s in there waiting for you,” she told Jonathan. Her red face was
suflused with vicarious tenderness, and when Jonathan went in she sighed.

THE TOWNSMAN

205 ,

em have it/’ she told the men. “It’ll never seem' so good' again.”

, “Hey, ol lady!” her husband roared at her. He sat on a high stool behind
his bar, stirring a spoon in a tin cup. ■

“No, it won’t, Henry Drear,” she said and, seizing a towel from the wall
behind his head, she fell to mopping the bar. '

Behind the closed door Jonathan and Judy stood for the least part, of a
moment Then Judy put out her hands and lifted her head.

“Dear Jonathan!” she' said softly.

And at the sound of her voice he stepped toward her and took her in
his arms. “Judy— Judy!” he muttered. His lips were on her hair, her temple,
on the smooth firmness of her cheek and then her full throat, and with
every kiss his arms hardened about her.

“Why, Jonathan,” she cried. She was a little frightened.

But the passion, deep and slow in his being, was stirring and waking,
rising to the surface of his eyes and lips, new passion that had never stirred
before. He crushed her head against his shoulder and held it there, his
palm against her cheek, and then he kissed her lips and then again and
yet again.

And yet in the end it was he who let her go, not she who withdrew
herself. He loosed her, and he turned his head away and tried to laugh.

“What am I doing, Judy girl? But we’re to be husband and wife, eh,
Judy?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She had been so surprised that she had not moved.
Jonathan was just like other men, after all, she was thinking. Somehow
she had not imagined he would be because he looked so calm and gentle
and pale. But inside maybe they were all the same. . . . She drew away
a very little and began to straighten herself in small secret ways, by a
touch at her hair, at the lace fichu about her neck, the lace about her
wrists. By means of these movements, so swift and slight that Jonathan
scarcely saw them, she set herself right.

“Are you glad to be here, sweet?” he asked.

“I’m real glad,” she said. Her eyes, lifted to his, were now full of a
lovely soft timidity. It seemed to him the essence of all that was exquisite
in a woman. He felt ashamed of his passion. He did not want to be a man
like his father, God knows! He wanted only to be a strong, protecting,
able man to meet this clinging, needful woman whose body was complete
beauty. He took her hand.

“My very dear,” he said, “my dearest dear!”

He drew her toward him gently, and when she was near was horrified
to discern in the brown depth of her eyes a thing like fear, and in her hand
a small reluctance.

“You aren’t afraid of me, Judy!” he cried. “Why, nobody’s afraid of
me, my dear!”

“I’m not afraid, exactly,” she said.

206

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

' "‘What, then?” he- asked. He had her very near again now, but passion
was held back by this look and this reluctance.

“It’s only-oughtn’t we to go out now? They’re waiting for us out there.”

"T’ve waited a long time, too, Judy,” he said.

"T know.” She came of her own accord the last space between them and
kissed him. He felt her kiss, soft as a snowflake on his cheek, and he said
abruptly, “Reckon you’re right, Judy. Let’s go out.”

With her hand in his arm he threw open the door into the tavern, and
at the same moment noise broke like bedlam. The room was full. All of
Median was there-no, not the Parrys, but everybody else-and not a soul
without a tin pan or a horn or a cowbell to make a noise, and to noise
everyone added yells. Judy hid her face against his shoulder, and he put his
arm about her and stood in the doorway smiling as long as the noise blared.
Then Evan leaped on the bar, beating Mrs. Drear’s tin washtub, turned
over like a drum. When he caught Jonathan’s look he beat the louder.

“Let’s see the bride!” Evan yelled.

“Look up, lady!” a man’s voice shouted.

“Give us a look, Judy!” Henry Drear roared.

“Look around for a minute, Judy,” Jonathan whispered. “They mean
the best.”

And Judy, after a moment’s coaxing, pushed back the curls from her
face and lifted her head and every man in the room saw her. But Jonathan,
gazing at her too, saw the direction of her eyes. They were fixed upward in
soft appeal, and Jonathan followed as he might follow the path of a moon-
beam and he found the end. She gazed at Evan, and Evan gazed at her.

Stephen Parry put down his tools. He was working against deep winter
on the schoolhouse, but winter would win, and now he knew it. The day
had begun with a bitter wind, and by midmorning snow was glowing. From
the north a smooth, even gray spread over the sky. The wind heightened,
and he had to be careful lest he slip on the new-fallen snow. By noon he
gave up. He clambered down the sheU of the house and found the lunch
Sue had wrapped for him. He ate it, standing in a corner under the roof.
The bread and pork was as hard as stone, and in the thick pottery jug
the coffee was ice cold.

When he had eaten and drunk he plodded through the now driving snow
to Jonathan’s sod house and knocked at the door. A child opened it, and
as he opened it the noise and talk and laughter of children at noon recess

THE TOWNSMAN

2G7

came out in an uproar. Jonatliaii stood mending the fire, and he looked up
at Stephen, the tongs in his hand.

/^Come in, Steve/* he shouted. “That is, if you can. Shut the door,
Melissa. Most of them brought their dinners with them today, and that’ s
why all this hubbub. You see why I want to get them out of my house,
Steve.”

“Sure,” Stephen replied. He hated to teii Jonathan, but it must be done.
“Mr. Goodliffe/* he said gently, “I sure do hate to tell you, but I ain’t
gonneh get that schoolhouse done before spring. I jest cain’t.”

He held up his hands. “I got frostbit today as it was, and if my hands
are gone, I got nothin’ to earn my livin’ with.”

The noise of the children stopped. It was not much to them whether
the new schoolhouse was finished or not, Jonathan’s house was comfort-
able, and it had become their own.

Jonathan’s face tightened at the mouth. “I don’t want you to freeze your
hands, certainly,” he said. He put down the tongs. “And I reckon you’ve
tried to get help.**

“Yessir, everywhere. But nobody wants to work in the open this weather.
I’m fixin’ to snatch any warm days they is and git the roof finished so’s
there’ll be cover. But plaster would freeze before I could git it mixed.
’Tain’t only jest labor.**

“Well,” Jonathan said, “I reckon it’s not to be helped.” He paused
for a moment and then went on, his face with only its usual careful ex-
pression. “You’ll make it the first job in the spring?**

“I will,” Stephen said, backing toward the door. “Fm terrible sorry.**

Jonathan inclined his head slightly and wet his lips.

“Well, good day, Steve,” Jonathan said. “It’s time for school to take
up for the afternoon.’*

“Good-by, suh.” Steve let himself out of the door and closed it

“Pupils, attention please,’* Jonathan said calmly. The school shuffled
back into its place, and Jonathan took up his pointing stick and went to
the blackboard.

“The square of the hypothenuse of a right triangle,” he said, “is equal
to the sum of the squares of the other two sides, thus—” He began to
draw his usual beautifully neat figures upon the board.

I shall have to compel Judy, he was thinking.

“I shan’t give you a choice, Judy, sweet,” he was saying to her. They
were in her room at American House. She had made it comfortable and
somehow pretty. She had curtained the bed off with Indian blankets so
that the rest of the room was her own sitting room. There was a tin stove
in it and a heap of split wood beside it. On the table was an oil lamp.
He sat in the rocking chair by the fire but not rocking, because she sat on
a hassock with her head against his knees. Ever}^ evening they spent to-
gether in this room.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

208

■ ■ She did not move her head from imder his caressing' hand. He loved her
hair. It was not soft, as his mother’s hair was. It was full of spring and
curl, and' no smoothing could make it smooth. He loved to feel it catch
and curl about his fingers.

You’re marrying the schoolteacher/’ he said playfully, **and so you’ll
have to put up with my school.”

“But wherell I sit all day?” she asked. “There’s only the bit of bed-
room. And winter’s still here.”

He had only thought of their evenings when, he had told himself, he
would move the desks and stools into one half of the room. He had not
thought of all the hours when she would be alone. Now he remembered,
too, how cold the bedroom was.

“You can come and sit by the school fire,” he said.

She smiled without answering. Her face was rosy and placid, but under
it she was thinking of what she wanted for herself. But she did not speak.

“We want to get married quickly, don’t we, dear?” Jonathan asked, his
hands tender under the curls upon her white neck. “You and me to-
gether’il make the winter short. When spring comes the school will move
out, and we’ll have a fair house then all to ourselves,”

She rubbed her head like a cat against his fondling hand. “I don’t seem
to care whether we’re married or not so long as we’re together,” she mur-
mured.

Jonathan laughed. “I believe you’re too lazy to get married,” he said.
Her sweet softness of movement, her pretty dallying over anything she
did, her long drowsy silences when they sat together, she like this or on his
knees, he loved to call her laziness, but it was sweet to him because under
his own calm he was so full of restless and nervous energy. He had never
known rest, he often thought, until she came. But rest would not be com-
plete until they had slept together, night after night. But he could not tell her
that. She smiled up at him without answer. She had known since she was
born that if she smiled she need not speak. She was a little irritated there-
fore when a moment later Jonathan pressed her.

“Shall we marry at once, Judy? Why not? Tomorrow. There’s a preacher
here now.” An itinerant preacher had come to Median and, because of
an infected hand, which Mrs. Drear was poulticing, he was delaying.

“No, not tomorrow,” Judy said.

“Next week then,” he urged. “Why not, dear heart?” He took her chin
and looked down at her. “Judy, do you love me?”

“Of course.” Her lips framed the words silently.

“Of course what?” he demanded,

“I love you—”

“Then if ii be next week— eh, Judy? On Saturday.”

He held her chin so hard that it was uncomfortable and she could not
escape.

“All right, Jonathan, but only if you’ll make it two weeks.”

THE TOWNSMAN

209 '

lie persisted.

: ^Tm-not ready—next week,” she said.

He felt himself flush. He knew enough about women to know there were
times. He had plagued his mother with questions once because she had
looked so pale, until she had said impatiently, ■ *^Give over, Jonathan— -it’s
only my woman’s curse.”

‘‘Whaf s that, Mother?”

^^Eve’s curse, I reckon. Once a month a woman’s got to be ill a bit, and
you may as well know, for you’ll be marrying a woman one day, and
she’ll thank you to leave her alone then.”

Now instantly delicate, he agreed. “Two weeks, surely, Judy-lf I have to
bribe the preacher.” He let her go and lifted her to his knee. “That’s my
own wife,” he said comfortably.

They sat together in the chair, the room warm and still. Around the
house the prairie wind howled, and in the tavern there was the clatter of
pewter and tin cups and plates and men’s voices. In the inner silence
Jonathan heard the door bang and there was a roar of laughter.

“That’ll be Evan,” he said immediately.

He questioned, scarcely aware that he did, the sweet weight of Judy’s
body relaxed in his arms. In all these days he had not discovered what
Judy thought of Evan or Evan of Judy. Neither mentioned the other to him.
But there was not now the quiver of a nerve in Judy’s flesh. She did not
stir or move the direction of her eyes as she gazed into the open door
of the stove.

“Everybody likes Evan,” Jonathan said. He could hear men still laugh-
ing. Evan could always set laughter afire in any place he chose.

“I don’t,” Judy said lazily. “I hate him.” She spoke without a flicker of
intensity in the soft slow way in which she said everything.

“Why?” Jonathan asked. He was greatly astonished.

“I don’t know,” Judy said pleasantly. “I just naturally hate him,”

Jonathan laughed with his delight in her. She was so lovely and so un-
reasonable, so adorable in all her foolishness.

“You mustn’t say that, my Judy,” he scolded with tenderness. “Why,
Evan’s my best friend, a wonderful chap and loyal as made. He’d stick to
me through anything, and to you, too, for my sake.”

“I don’t like his eyes,” she murmured.

“Why, he’s thought to have uncommon fine eyes, so dark and flashing-
like.”

“He’s conceited,” she said.

“No, now, that he’s not,” Jonathan protested. “It’s his great abilities— a
natural-bom orator, Judy, so that it’s a treat to hear him argue a case.
I’ve not seen Mm in court, but sometimes he’s rehearsed a case with me
for practice. His voice can be heard anywhere. It was in the paper once
in Topeka that his voice could be heard all through the courthouse when
he was arguing a case for the railroad company.”

210

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

■ ''He thicks all he needs to dois to raise his right "eyebrow at a woman,”
Judy said. In his arms she did not move.

"Mo, cow, he lifts his eyebrow like that whenever he’s about to crack a
joke,” Jonathan cried.

She sat up. "You like him better than anybody-bettefn me.”

He was deeply shocked. "Judy, shut up, my dear. Such things can’t be
said. He’s my friend, but you’re my wife.”

But he thought to himself here was the seat of the coldness between
Evan and Judy. They were jealous of each other with Mm. Only the other
day it had occurred to him that he and Evan had scarcely met for days.
It was his own fault. Every free moment he spent with Judy, and Evan in
delicacy had not pressed himself.

"When we’re married you’ll see that Evan is your friend just the same
as he’s mine,” he told Judy. He pressed her head back into the hollow
of his shoulder. "Lie back, my sweet,” he said.

Long after he was gone she sat without moving by the stove, her elbows
on her knees and her hands soft fists against her cheeks. There were still
voices in the tavern, and she was listening to them. Besides, what use was
there in going to bed when she could not sleep?

It was nearly midnight when silence fell. Jonathan had gone at half past
nine, tender of her good name. Now she rose in this first silence and went
to the door and threw it open. Evan sat there alone at a table, a mug of
beer in his hand.

"I hoped you’d gone, too,” she said. "I want to sleep.”

"I’m going,” he said shortly.

She came in and stood by the table. “I’m marrying Jonathan on Satur-
day, two weeks,” she said.

"Goddamn you,” he answered, staring at her.

Mrs. Drear came in, her eyes bleary with sleep. "It’s closing time, folks,”
she said. The words were easy, but her voice was sharp,

"I was just telling Evan that Jonathan and I have set the day,” Judy
said without moving. The purity of her face grew more pure, as it always
did when she felt anyone was angry with her. "It’s a week from next
Saturday. The schoolhouse can’t get finished, he says, so we may as well.”

“Fm glad to hear it,” Mrs. Drear said. She swept up an armful of dirty
mugs.

Evan got up. "So’m I,” he said heartily. "Jon’s waited long enough for
you, Judy.”

"He shore has,” Mrs. Drear agreed.

"I think so, too,” Judy said. Her voice was tender with sweetness. "Shall
I help you with the dishes, Mrs. Drear?”

“I don’t care if you do,” Mrs. Drear answered. Nobody could put a
finger on Judy, she thought. The gM was always kind and willing. Then
why did she feel queer about her sometimes? Jennet had been bad enough.

THE TOWNSMAN

211 :

Though Jennet was Henry’s own ■ daughter, there was no , use pretending
she had not taken more after her slut of a mother than she had' after
Henry. But Jennet was as open as a book. Mrs. Drear yawned over the
dishpan and then sighed. Yes, Judy was good about helping. It couldn’t be
denied she was a real helpful girl. You would say she was a good girl if
somehow you could be sure she was.

Jonathan in his bed lay awake with desire. He recognized it and was
ashamed of it. Love and desire were. two different things, and he meant
to keep them so. I shan’t be like my father, he thought. I shan’t have my
Judy growing into what my poor mother is.

He knew by now that his mother had had another child and lost it. Ruth
had written Mm secretly one of her printed letters. Without wanting to be
a murderer, he was glad the child was dead. Things were hard enou^.
Maybe he ought to have gone West himself to see how tMngs were. But
he had had letters, scanty as usual, from Ms mother. It was natural enough
that she had not told him of the cMld. She never spoke of childbirth to
him. The life was hard there, she said, but maybe it would be better, she
always said. And he couldn’t go now.

But desire for Judy ebbed out of him as he thought about his mother.
He was going to make up everything to Judy. She shouldn’t have babies
unless she wanted them. And never, never would he persuade h^ against
her will, and never make her afraid of Ms ill-temper if she did not want
him. He lay thinking of his father with deep unyielding anger. He would be
to Judy all that his father had not been to his mother. And then, strangely,
having begun thus to think about his mother, he could think of no one
else. She seemed to possess him. He had not for weeks given over his mind
to her like this. He tried to recall Judy, but there was only Ms mother.
He grew restless and at last sat up in his bed. If I believed m anything
of the kind, I’d be wondering if aught was wrong with her, he thought.

He was not superstitious, but he sat listening and feeling through the
darkness toward his mother. Coyotes were crying in the night. The wind
had abated, and he could hear the wailing agony of their crying. But it
was a sound common enough to the night, and he gave it no heed. He
pushed Ms mind beyond through the darkness like a quivering, searching
probe. SometMng was wrong, maybe, or for sure.

It was nearly an hour before he could lie down again. He’d write to-
morrow. Once more he tried to tMnk of Judy and could not. He fell asleep
thinking only of Ms mother.

In the poor sod house in the midst of the western plains, Mary gave
up her struggle. Beside her Clyde lay sleeping a hard snoring sleep. The
harsh labor of his days had coarsened every part of him. His body, nerving
itself to the day’s work, indulged itself in food eaten quickly and roughly,
in loud noise and quick temper, in a passion often savage in its demands,
and then sprawling sleep. Mary, lying awake on the edge of the bed, away
from his unwashed body, was crying quietly.

I s’all give up, she thought. It’s no use. I can’t die here with nobody but
Ruth. It’s too hard on her. Oh, Jonathan!

Such a yearning burst out of her for her son that she felt her head grow
giddy. “Jonathan!” The name broke from her again in a low groan, in-
voluntary, as though something had wrenched it out of her. Clyde woke,

“Eh!” he granted.

“Clyde!” she whispered in the darkness.

“What?” He had no mind to wake.

“Fm going back to Median,” she said.

That waked him. “What for?”

“I daren’t stay the winter here again, with a new baby.”

“But we’re all right.”

“Fm not. If I hadn’t got caught again ’twould be different. But things
aren’t as they should be in me. I can tell.”

“You’re allays nervous when your time’s near,” he said sullenly.

“This isn’t only that,” she saii “I’ve had enough babies to know.”

He flounced himself. “How can I go when I’ve got the sheep and the
cows to care for? And it’s the worst time of year for me to take such a
journey. If there’s a blizzard, who’ll tend the beasts while Fm gone? Jamie
can’t manage alone.”

“But Jamie can drive Ruth and Maggie and me,” she said. “And you
can stay with your beasts,”

If she could only get to Median where Jonathan was, it would be almost
like going home. And Mrs. Drear could help her when her time came.

“Fm going, Clyde, so it’s no good your talking.”

America had made her mean-tempered, but she could not help it. Ev-
erything was against a woman here. She had to fight for her life.

“Then I won’t talk, if it’s no good,” Clyde said. He turned his back and
jerked the covers. She knew he was full of fury and could not care. Plenty
of times she had said to herself that he had it hard, too. Pie wasn’t lazy,
at least the way he used to be in England. In his way he worked hard.

THE TOWNSMAN

213

but he bad no luck. The cattle strayed and were lost, however he branded
them. And the, cowmen in the next homestead were thieves, as .everybody
knew, but how to prove it? You couldn’t expect a common chap like
Clyde to have his word taken against an educated Englishman’s, and he
owned the ranch. Besides, there was Jennet.

Jennet had come and gone twice, and now she was back again. Ruth
had' told her that Jamie had seen her.

“I don’t want to know about it,” she had told Ruth.

She tightened hei' lips in the darkness. When she got back to Median
she did not want to have to tell Mrs. Drear that Jennet had lived "with
the Englishman twice, once for three months and again for a month, and
now she was back again. '

She felt suddenly faint with nausea. But it was not the usual nausea of
pregnancy. The sickness was mingled with pain in her lower belly, not
sharp pain but one so vast and deep that it was as though it grasped
some center of her vitality.

It’s a wicked kind of pain, she thought anxiously and retched as sweat
burst out of her. This, she thought in terror, was life or death. FH set out
tomorrow, she thought wildly, or itTl be too late.

Two days before his wedding Jonathan was shaving himself at twilight.
For a fair man he had a rough, quickly growmg beard, and he shaved
evenings instead of mornings because he wanted his cheek smooth against
Judy’s. He was whistling and Ml of happiness. Everything was going right
for him except one thing, and that maybe would, after all. Evan was not
sure he could stand up with him at the wedding. He had spent half the
afternoon today after school arguing it in Evan’s ofifice.

“Put the wedding off a few days and Fll come,” Evan said in his off-
hand way.

Jonathan was deeply shocked. “A man doesn’t put off his wedding.”

Evan laughed. “Of course not, and I was only teasing you. What I say
is, go on and I’ll be here if I can, boy. It’s bad luck this case had to be
called right now in Topeka. Wait till I get Median the county seat Will
you let me do that, Jon, if you won’t have it a cattle town?”

He had forgiven Jonathan, but he used their disagreement for teasing.
Jonathan smiled without answer. Evan went on, “No, son, I’ve got to go.
After all, Fm the corporation lawyer for the Santa Fe in these parts, and
the claims for cattle killed on the tracks have got to be settled. It’s getting
to be the way a lot of unsuccessful cattlemen are growmg fat. They drive
their cows on the tracks—”

Evan’s rich voice rolling along was befuddling in its ease. Jonathan
stopped it.

“I won’t have anyone else,” he said. “If you don’t come, I’ll stand up
alone.”

' 214 ;

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

If s liumaiily possible FU be at your side,^’ Evan: retorted; ‘‘eveii if
I don’t approve the match.” He made no bones about Judy.

“Is that the real reason why you don’t want to come?” Jonathan asked,

' “I don’t like the woman, Jon, and you may as well know it,” he said.

“But why, Evan?” Jonathan demanded.

“Too, pretty,” Evan said promptly. “A woman as pretty as that is think-
ing only of herself. You deserve someone .who’ll think only of you.”

“You mustn’t say such things, Evan.”

“I must and I will if I’m to stay your friend.”

Jonathan let it pass. He knew them both, he thought tenderly, and some
day, when Judy was his wife, Evan would come to see her for what she
was, and Judy would learn to appreciate his friend. He would wait.

“Well, I don’t give up hope,” he said with his wry smile.

“That’s right,” Evan said heartily.

When he had stopped a moment to tell Judy, she had looked strange, he
thought.

“Fm glad he’s not coming,” she said. “He always makes me feel I’ve
put my clothes on wrong, somehow.”

Jonathan had laughed. “Oh, you two,” he had said. He kissed her very
lightly. “I’ll kiss you hard later after I’ve shaved,” he told her half-playfuliy.
He was so happy these days that ail his slight instincts toward mirthfulness
were awake in him. And so he had turned homeward to make himself
ready for her. He did not like to wear his work clothes when he went to
her at any time. But these last two nights before their marriage were very
precious. He wanted no slightest withdrawal in Judy from him.

He heard something. Razor in hand, he stopped to listen. The early dark
beyond the windows was like midnight and the door was closed against the
early cold. But a wagon had drawn up and stopped. He put down the
razor on the shelf under the small mirror, and wiped the soap from bis
cheek. Then he threw the door open.

The light from the house streamed upon a sad4ooking group of people.
For a moment he could not believe his eyes. A tall boy and a girl were
clambering out of the wagon.

“Jonathan!” a voice called faintly. He leaped forward.

“Mother, ifs never you! Ruth—Jamie— why, what in heaven’s name!
Maggie, too! Where’s Dad? Oh, Mother, whatever’s wrong with you?”

Mary had raised herself out of the end of the old covered wagon, and
he saw her sick face. He lifted her out, and then he saw what was the
matter and he ground his teeth.

“Come in,” he said, “come in quick and lie down in the bed. My God,
RutMe, to let her come like this!”

“She would come,” Ruth said. Her old timidity had grown deeper in the
long months upon the plains, and was as wild as a hare’s now. She blinked
in the light of the room and clutched Maggie’s hand fast.

“Get me down, quick,” Mary groaned. “Quick, and call Mrs. Drear,

THE TOWNSMAN

215

Jonathan. T mistrust it’s iny time. Dear God, how Fve prayed to get home
first! Well, for once He’s let me have my hope.” ■ ' '

She was sighing with pain, and she sat down on the bed and tried' to
pull off' her shoes. .

‘Take ’em off for her, you, Jamie—or Ruth,” Jonathan shouted,, ‘‘ril
go for Mrs. Drear.”

He rushed out into the darkness and ran' over the clattering dry boards
to the tavern. Mrs. Drear was sitting alone at the kitchen table eating her
supper before she served up the food to others. He ran in upon her.

“Mother’s come,” he gasped. “And, Mrs. Drear, will you— she’s going
to— to— to— she needs a woman, fast”

“My soul and body,” Mrs, Drear shrieked. She jumped to her feet and'
lifted a kettle of boiling water from the stove. “Henry, you’ll have to dish
up,” she shouted as she passed the bar, and then she was gone.

Far into the night Jonathan worked at her side. He forgot Judy or where
he was to have been. He and Ruth and Mrs. Drear fought together for
his mother’s life. He had never seen a child bom before, and he was ter-
rified at what he saw. Did every birth so devastate another’s being? He was
drenched with sweat and groaned aloud without knowing until Mrs. Drear
bade him be silent. He rushed out for a moment and wept heartfiy before
Jamie’s awe-stricken face, and then rushed back again for fear she might
die in the moment he was away.

The child was bom at midnight, a girl, small and thin, but living, and
less than an hour later, Mary died.

He had a strange feeling as he sat before the fire with the little newborn
creature in his arms that somehow he had been widowed before ever he
was married. The blanket curtain was drawn between the two rooms. The
two rooms were very still. Jamie had gone to ask Stephen Parry to make
the coffin. Ruth was moving about the room, tidying it, and crying quietly.
No pupils came to school, for he had announced a week’s holiday for his
wedding. Mrs. Drear had stayed to make Mary neat for burial and then
had gone home, taking Maggie with her.

“This one’s too lively for you to have around now, I reckon,” she had
said. She hesitated, Maggie’s hand in hers. “Jonathan, I’ll tell Judy. It’ll
mean puttin’ off tomorrow, ’course.”

He had actually forgotten that tomorrow was to be his wedding day.
Now he remembered and nodded.

“What to do with that mite—” Mrs. Drear’s mournful brown eyes turned
toward the hearth where in a wooden box the baby lay asleep,

“I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “I’ll have to think about ever3^hing. I do
thank you, Mrs. Drear.”

“Don’t mention it,” she sighed.

So she had gone. The little baby began suddenly to wail and Jonathan
picked it up and, wrapping his old coat about it, he sat down for the first

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

216

time he had sat all night and held it Some soothing quality in him lowed
into: the chEdj and it slept again.

: It seemed to him that somehow it was his own child whose mother was
dead. He 'was bereft of something beyond his own mother. He was re-
sponsible for more than a son’s duty.

^*We can’t wait till Dad knows, can we?” Ruth’s half-whispered question
startled him.

. ''No,” he said shortly. “How could we? I s’all just ha¥e to do what ought
to be done.” He controlled a strong trembling in his throat. “However did
younot bring her home long before?” he demanded. He was thinking; of his
mother’s body. After the baby was born it seemed to shrink: into a wisp.
She was such a small little thing even at her best, and now there was left
of her only a handful of bones. A woman murdered, if ever there was
murder, he thought somberly, and was glad that Ms father was not in this '
house.

.. “How could I?”. Ruth asked timidly. “Besides, she always said as how
things would be better maybe, and how could she leave Dad?”

“He didn’t see, I suppose, that he might have brought her?”

“No, he didn’t,” Ruth said simply.

Jonathan looked at her sternly over the sleeping child. “Tel! me the
truth—was it terrible for all the time?”

Ruth nodded. “Yes, it was. She was always af eared. There was the
snakes and she always would think Maggie would get bit. one, day— a mor-
tal lot of snakes, there was, Jonathan, and they’d crawl in between the sod
in the walls. And there was one on her bed, and: she dreamed about it all
the time after. And the water was bitter and hard. And Jamie swears
sometMng teriible now, and she minds his growln’ up rough and ignorant-
like. And Maggie never minds nobody and, oh, the wind, blowin’ and
blowin’ night and day, used to drive her daft-like. Once she went outside
and screamed and screamed, and I thought she was^ daft for sure, but then
she began to cry, and after she cried a while she was herself again.”

“Did Dad see nothing?”

“He’s away ail day and lots of nights, too.”

“And were there no neighbors?”

“No, unless— no, you couldn’t say there was neighbors. The' Englishman
wasn’t a neighbor, and Mother never even wanted to hear tell of Jennet.”

“Jennet?” Jonathan cried.

“She was there at his ranch sometimes. 'ShC' was There . when -we,

He sat with this news, thinking of it. “I thought ' she waS 'in Frisco,” he
said.

“So she was— she’s only sometimes at the ranch,” Ruth replied.

“Don’t tell Drears,” he said shortly after a while.

“I wouldn’t nohow,” she said.

“Anyhow,” he corrected her. If he did not correct her now, there was
no one to do It

THE TOWNSMAN

217.

"AnylioWj” she repeated humbly.

The baby began to wail again, and he, wondered if it were hungry. There
was no immediate need for food, he knew, but thiS' one was such a wee thin
thing maybe it would want food earlier than the others had. He hushed
it and at last rocked it in his arms, but the child cried on.

^'Whatll we, do?” he asked Ruth.

“Could I mix a bit of Sour and water?” she suggested.

“That can’t hurt, can it?”

“I reckon , not,” she replied.

But while they hesitated the door opened, and Sue and Stephen came
In. Sue had a shawl over her head and a man’s coat tied over her shoulders
like a cape. She threw both off with one sweep of her arms.

“Give her to me,” she said. She took the baby from Jonathan and hesi-
tated a moment. Then she went j&rmly on. “Mr, Goodiiffe, suh, do you
min’ if I give it mah breas’? My baby is six mont’s, but I think itll be fresh
still, and I sho have plenty.”

He stared at Sue for one startled moment and with her abnormal
sensitivity she seemed suddenly to grow in stature before his eyes.

“If you don’t want me,” she said proudly.

His reason controlled him instantly. “I thank you very much,” he said.
“It may save the child’s life.”

But he left the room at the same moment and went into the other
with Stephen and stood there while Stephen in sad silence measured the
sleeping figure on the bed.

“Cottonwood timber’s aU I’ve got on hand jest now, suh,” he said when
he had finished. “But I can use pitch to make it tight.”

Jonathan nodded.

“Sue’s got some white cotton to line it,” Stephen said gently.

Jonathan nodded again.

“I’ll have it done tonight— will you want it tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said, and then remembered that tomorrow was to
have been his wedding day.

“Ain’t you goin’ right over there to Jonathan’s?” Mrs. Drear demanded
of Judy. “He shore needs a woman to help out.”

She felt exhausted this morning, and the sight of Judy, very pretty in a
red wool dress with a red velvet collar and cuffs, somehow added to her
exhaustion. She poured more milk into Maggie’s cup.

218

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

''Fli go the minute Fve had my breakfast,'' Judy said gently. She moved
gracefully about the tavern kitchen,' pouring herself a xup' of coffee from
the big granite pot on the range, and cutting herself bread and buttering
it ' without giving' a glance at the round-faced, red-haired little girl at the
table in the middle of the kitchen. Mrs. Drear had waked her half an hour,
before to pour out the story of the night. She had' sat up in bed, listening,
her shining hair curling over her shoulders. Mrs. Drear, looking at her
without liking her better, had nevertheless felt sorry for Jonathan because
the girl was so pretty in her nightgown.

“ ’Course you can’t have the wedding tomorrow."

‘‘No, of course not," Judy had agreed. That was all she said. But she
had climbed out of bed and poured water into the porcelain basin on the
washstand. Mrs. Drear had gone away then.

Whether she cares or whether she don’t— she had been thinking the half-
hour since as she fried salt pork and slabs of mush.

When Judy came in, in her red dress, her curls neatly pinned on her
head, there was still no telling. Red, Mrs. Drear thought, wasn’t suitable,
either. But probably the girl hadn’t thought. She sat there by the window
eating her bread cut in little narrow strips. Mrs. Drear, glancing at her,
saw Jamie go by the window with Stephen and Sue, and she ran to pound
on the pane.

“Jamie!” she screamed, and when he turned clawed at him to come in.
A moment later he was there at the door, a tall black-haired boy, his face
cheerful in spite of what had happened.

“Come in and eat,” Mrs. Drear ordered him. “There’ll be trouble
enough at your house without fixing breakfast for you. This hyere’s Judy,
yom sister-in-law to be. You can take her along after you’ve et."

“Pleased to meet you," Jamie said. “Hello, Mags."

He felt embarrassed in Mrs. Drear’s presence because he had seen Jen-
net a few days before he left his father’s ranch. She had been riding with
the Englishman, loping along at his side upon a chestnut horse, riding
astride, too, wearing corduroy pants and high boots and a big cowboy hat.
He had been herding sheep, and she pulled up when she saw him and stared
at him, and when she recognized him she flicked his nose with the end of
her whip.

“You don’t know who I am,” she had declared.

“I do, too,” he had said so sullenly that she laughed.

“Then don’t tell me,” she had said, “for I don’t want to know.”

The Englishman came cantering up then, a long lazy sort of chap.

“Who’s this, Jenny?” he asked.

“A boy I used to know,” she answered mischievously.

Jamie had stared straight back at the Englishman’s pale blue eyes.

“Ah,” the Englishman had said at last, “then don’t Imow him any more,
will you?”

They had gone galloping off together then, and he had watched them

THE TOWNSMAN

219

go, until the prairie swallowed them into a mirage. But he had felt queer
because Jennet looked so different from the way she had used to look in
this kitchen— older, and not so pretty, and yet he had wanted to look at her.

He lifted his eyes secretly to Judy, met hers, and looked hastiy away
again. .

‘^There.’* Mrs. Drear handed him a plate of fried mush. ‘‘Sit down across
from Judy.”

“Thanks.” He took the plate and sat at the opposite end of the table.
Her soft voice made him lift his eyes again. -

“Fm ever so sorry— about last night.”

He nodded and suddenly found his throat choked so that he could not
swallow.

“Will you all stay here now?” Judy’s gentle voice was at him again.

He forced himself to swallow. “I reckon lii have to get right back to
help Dad. One man can’t hardly handle the sheep and cows, too. Don’t
know even as we ought to try both,”

“Then the others will stay with Jonathan?”

“Reckon they’ll have to,” he said. “We couldn’t hardly handle a baby
out there.”

She did not speak again. She sat sipping her coffee and eating her bread
and butter daintily and slowly, and when she was finished she rose and
smiled. “Fll put on my bonnet and go.”

“Oh, Judy!”

Jonathan leaped to his feet and took her in his arms and put his face
down upon her shoulder.

“I knew you’d come. It’s been a dreadful night.”

She put her hand to his cheek. “I knew it,” she said. “So I came,”

She saw a young dark-haired girl, and over Jonathan’s shoulder smiled
at her. •

All these people, she was thinking, all to live in this house! Of course
I can’t be married now.

She drew herself gently out of Jonathan’s arms, but she kept Ms hand.
“Is that the poor little baby?” she asked. She went toward the box where
the baby now lay asleep since Sue had left it fed. “It’s very small,” Judy
said. “What’s her name, Jonathan?” She gazed down at the child but did
not touch it.

“I haven’t— we haven’t thought about that,” Jonathan said sadly.

“Why not Mary?” Judy asked, “after your mother?”

Jonathan’s eyes met Ruth’s. “Why not?” he agreed. “You see, Ruthie,
how Judy knows the right thing at once. Mary it is— she’d like that.”

“But we named the baby that died Mary,” Ruth said.

“AH the more reason why this living one should take the name,” Jon-
athan said.

220

AMERICAN TOPTYCH

He had not wept at ail, but now with Judy’s hand softly iii' biS' he wanted
to.': weep, to Ml her— .

“Run outdoors a bit, Ruthie, there’s a good girl,” he said.

, ' And when she had gone he put his head down on Judy’s shoulder and
let the tears well up into his eyes. He gave one sob.

“Can you marry a chap like me, Judy sweet— with all these here in the
house?” , .

“Don’t let’s talk about it now, Jonathan,” she said in her gentlest voice.
So gentle was her voice that it could not tell him anything, “Only we
mustn’t put Ruth out,” she said. “It’s cold today, and she’s no coat on.”
She gave him a IMe squeeze and went to the door, “Come in, Ruth,” she
said. “It’s too cold outside.”

So there was no time for him to weep, after all.

She stayed nearly all day in the sod house. With Jonathan she went into
that inner room and stood beside his dead mother, lying in the bed that
tomorrow was to have been hers. If she thought of this she said nothing.
And when at noon, as she was helping Ruth to prepare the meal, Sue
came in to nurse the child again, she let no surprise escape her.

“I didn’t know what ever to do, and Sue offered,” Jonathan said, haif-
defensively and ashamed of his defense.

“It’s good of her,” Judy said peaceably.

In the afternoon she sat down to mend a rent in Jonathan’s coat and
looked so quiet and so beautiful that his sore heart took rest. He drew a
three-legged stool to her side.

“Maybe we could manage after all,” he said.

She smiled. “And put Ruth and the children out when we wanted to be
alone?”

“Maybe we could all live at American House.”

“And leave no room for travelers, besides the cost?” She shook her
head and stitched steadily. She seemed so remote that he was frightened.

“Will you wait, Judy?”

She lifted her beautiful black eyes. “What do you think?” she asked.

He thought she would, but he did not speak. He took the pretty thim-
bled hand, the skin so smooth and white, and kissed the palm passionately.

“Dear heart!” he murmured.

She drew it back again to use. And after a moment she said, “Won’t
Evan be surprised when he comes back!”

He had not thought of Evan, or only to remember that he was in Topeka.

“What made you think of Evan?” he demanded.

“Only because he’ll be pleased,” Judy replied, “because he doesn’t want
you to marry me.”

The composure of her face did not break. He sat watching her quick
hands, his heart clinging to her in his sadness. Not for a moment had
he forgotten all day the quiet body lying upon his bed. And even now he
could not forget. At sunset, Stephen said, he would bring the cofiBn,

THE TOWNSMAN

221

getting late,” Judy said suddenly, glancing at the sky. “I must be
going, Jonatbaii, if tliere’s nothing else I can do. Ruth’s so handy.” She
smiled across the room at Ruth, who sat holding the baby, her back turned
carefully toward them.

And he thought, I must let her go. There’s- no reason why she should
be here when Stephen comes. It’ll be too hard on her.

So he let her go, wrapping her cape about her and tying her brown
hood under her chin. He walked a few steps with her into the biting wind,
and then he saw Stephen and ahead of him Sue.

*^Good night, my true love,” he murmured and tipped her head to find
her lips.

''Good night, Jonathan,” she said. Her face had never looked more
sweetly pure than now, in the pale evening light, and her lips were softer
than a child’s.

Mary was buried the day before the great blizzai*d. The wind as they
stood about the open grave was bitter beyond any Jonathan had ever felt.
Maggie had cried with cold, and Mrs. Drear had taken her back to the sod
house to stay with Sue and the baby. Ruth was trembling against him
with cold so that at last he whispered to Jamie, "Stand on the other side
of Ruth.”

Over the grave a traveling preacher was reading the Twenty-third Psalm,
but the wind tore his big voice to echoes and left of the psalm only shreds.
Judy, Jonathan had seen in a moment, was not here. He had postponed
the funeral a few minutes waiting for her. Then Henry had shouted through
the wind, "We’ll all get frostbite, Jonathan.”

"Where’s Judy?” he had muttered.

"She was dressed to come, but we hadn’t oughta wait,” Henry had
bawled against the wind. He looked up at the sky lowering over their
heads. "It might break any minute.”

So they had gone on with the sad little ceremony. Stephen Parry had
dug the grave through a crust of earth already frozen. It was in the corner
of the two acres that was to be the graveyard about the church that was
not yet built in the town that would one day be Median. Jonathan and
Evan together had planned it so.

"‘I shall not want!’” the preacher’s voice roared like a trumpet in a
second’s abatement of the wind and was lost again.

But Jonathan had not dreamed that his mother would lie here first. And
she had wanted everything in her short life. He made up his mind now
that in the spring he would move little Artie from the hollow to here be-
side her.

. the valley of the shadow . . ” the preacher’s voice cried out,

and the wind snatched the words away and fiiung them over the plains
where there was neither hill nor valley.

Evan was not here, and Judy was not here. But everyone else was.

,222

AMERieAN TRIPTYCH

They Stood, a handful of drab-colored human beings in the midst of The
■wide emptiness about them. They were dwarfed to the size and shape of
insects by. the land and the sky. A few rods away was fhe iimsy shelter of
Median. He looked at them all in a sudden terror because he too was one
of, them.

It’s too big for us here, he thought, and ionged with a sudden, sickening
longing for the smallness of England to be tight about him again. Now
Fll never be able to take Mother back to England, he thought. The old age
he had planned to give her when they left Dentwater he could never give
her, for she would have no old age. There’s nothing to go back for, he
thought. And he would miss her in England if he were alone there without
her. England and his mother were one.

No, he was committed now to this new country. ludy— Where was she?
He searched the roadway toward the hotel, but she was not there. And
then, his gaze returning sadly, he met by accident another pair of eyes.
They were Katie’s. He had scarcely seen her for months. She had been
away all the summer visiting her aunt in Topeka, Lew said. When she had
come back he had not thought to ask. But here she was, a tall, somewhat
gaunt-looking young girl, who had grown so much in the few months that
now it seemed only her hazel eyes were exactly as they had been. They
were as round and honest as ever in her plain face, and now red with
weeping.

He felt grateful to her for weeping. She had scarcely known his mother;
she was weeping, he knew, for him. And across the open grave he smiled
at her, a small, sad smile.

“ ‘And I will dwell in the house of the Lord f or ever The preacher’s
voice triumphed over the wind at last, and he clapped the Bible shut with
a bang.

. . . Judy, in good time for the funeral, had tied her brown fur-trimmed
cape under her chin and then tied on the small fur bonnet that went with it.
She smoothed the ribbons of the bow and glanced at the big clock as she
passed through the empty tavern. It was exactly the hour at which she
should have been marrying Jonathan, and in this very room, if his mother
had not come home. Even if she had died out there in the West, the wedding
would have been going on now because they would not have known it.
But the children would have come home to Jonathan, and then it would
have been too late for her to do anything to save herself. Now she was
saved. Something always saves me, she thought solemnly. It must be God.

She stood for a moment looking out of the panes of the tavern door.
The wind was whirling in great coils of dust and snow.

I wish something would save me now from having to go out, she thought.
The tavern was warm and sheltering. She hated winter as Joel did, and
every winter of her life they had gone south for his preaching. “There’s
souls to save where the climate’s good, too,” he had always said.

If she had gone with him, she thought, she might have been now in the

THE TOWNSMAN

Sajadwich Isles, a lovely spot^ Joel wrote her, where only man was, vile.
If she had gone, probaMy she could have married there, too, and settled
down,.

;She lingered on at the risk of being late. Everyone else .had gone, and she
was alone. If she said afterwards that she had been taken suddenly faint
so that she dared not go out, nobody was here now to say she was not.
But she waited a moment more for some salvation not of her own making.

And then it came again.' The door of Evan’s office next door opened, and
he hurried out, wrapped in his great cape, his head bent to the wind so that
he had to hold on his hat. Then he had only just come back from Topeka,
she thought, , for less than an hour ago Mrs. Drear had said as she went out
of the door with Maggie, “This is going to hit Evan real hard. ' He’s that
fond of Jonathan.”

And no one has told him, Judy thought, watching him. So he will come
here because he will think it’s still the wedding. She instantly forgot the
Sandwich Isles in the excitement of this present salvation.

She sat down quickly beside the big tavern table and buried her face on
her arms and waited. When she heard the door open, when she felt the
bluster of the wind against her, she did not move. She waited for his voice.

^‘Judyr he whispered.

Then she lifted her head. Her lips were red and trembling and her eye-
lashes were wet. She had never looked so beautiful and so piteous.

“What on earth— why, what’s—”

“There’s no wedding,” she faltered. “Fm not being married, after all
It’s a funeral instead. Jonathan’s mother came home and she died. There’s
a baby.”

She turned her quivering face up to him, seeming not to think of him or to
care who he was, but only to be Mi of her own trouble. “I was just— going
to the funeral. And then it came over me that this was the very moment
when if things had gone right, we’d have been standmg up together-so
I couldn’t '.go—”

Evan was dazed. “Wliy, I rushed back— for Jonathan’s sake—” He
breathed out the words. He glanced about the empty room. “Where’s—
I suppose everybody’s at the— the funeral.”

She nodded and drew a little lace handkerchief from her muff and
it to her lips. Evan sat down on the long bench but not quite near

“But— you’ll be married very soon, Judy.”

“How?” she asked. “There’s nowhere to live. The house is full of
chiidren-and there’s the baby, I don’t know how to take care of
babies. Besides, Jonathan— he can’t marry anybody. He oughtn’t to-he
hasn’t a home to offer.”

“You mean— you wouldn’t marry him anyway now?” he was breathing

: 224 ''

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH

be remedied.” His lips, were siiideoly^ too stiff, to speak.

'‘if you—*'

^^Evau-oh, dou’t tMink me- wicked,” ske. said, quickly, ''hut how did I ,
know? Tke last, tew days. have. shown me-I don’t, love him. I couldn’t
have married , him. God saved .me, .Evan., I might have gone on, and been
so unhappy. Now Fm saved.”

He was !ean,iiig toward her,, searching her face, drinking .up her words.
His black eyes were terrible 'm their burning Maze, upon her, but she did
not shrink from- them. - She wanted to throw, herself into that blaze, ..to be
taken with It, to be consumed. She lung back, her head and, '/stood, up.
And he leaped to his-.feet 'and snatched her into his;.arms^ and' kissed' her
upon the lips agaiO' and again,, and she who, had so often turned cool under
men’s kisses was, warm now. He’s loved me ail the time he was hating.me,
she thought m^ith triumph. Never had a, man been rude to her as Evan had
been, nor flouted.her so openly, and it was because beloved her like this.
And yet. as he kmed her he was groaning ■ and frowning and she could,
see his lace, dark, above hers, and she could bear him muttering, but not to
her.

.And' all the lime, he kept kissing her,:and she ,dung,.to. Mm until at, .last
she was exhausted and faint truly enough now, so that he,, had .to hold her
to keep her, from falling at his feet .

“We can’t help it,” he. groaned, “But who’ll tell him?” , ■

He put her down on the seat and wiped his lips again and again with his
handkerchief, and she leaned her head against Ms thighs, as he stood be-
side her, and she shivered with chill and ecstasy and fear. Who would
tell Jonathan, indeed? Who could save them now, save her and Evan to-
gether? She looked at him in real fright,

“Let’s run away,” she whispered.

“In this storm?”

“Is It too bad? You came through it”

“Yes, but— because I had to see you once more before you were— lost to
me.”

“Is that why you came?”

“Yes.”

“Evan, have you loved me always?”

“Yes, ever since I first saw you.”

“I loved you, too,” she said simply.

It seemed to her now that she had so loved him. At least she had looked
at Mm that day and had' known that he was a man she could love. She
divided all men into those 'she could love and those she could never love,
and now she knew that Jonathan belonged to those she could not. Oh,
she had been saved again! She felt suddenly strong and happy and good,
and she stood up,

“Let’s go. Fm not afraid, Evan, we could go now, and no one would
ever know you had come back. They will just find me gone. And Fll write

THE TOWNSMAN

225

Jonathan from Topeka that I’ve changed my mind. And then later, we can
Jnst—tell Mm .we’re mairied. Yon see, yon wouldn’t even lose him, that way.
He couldn’t blame, you if, after I changed my mind, I married you.”

She was so pretty, wooing him with her eyes and her voice, with her
fingers ' on Ms cheeks a,iid Ms eyelids and lips, and he was sure that she
should not many Jonathan,. That, at least, he had always been sure of—

‘'‘‘You’d make him miserable,” he muttered.

“I know I would,” she said with her smile most gay, most coaxing.
‘‘You’ve really .saved him from' me.”

'■' He laughed grimly. “At my own cost, probably!”

“Ah, but FH make you tenibiy happy!”

His head swam, and Ms blood burned. She was the sort he wanted, the
opposite of his mother and his sisters, tMs earthy, passionate, sooty-eyed
woman, with her cool ways and her skin as pale as cream, and her lovely
soft voice, and that promise of heat within her wMch showed in the very
way she walked across a room and in the most casual look from her eyes.

“And if Jonathan ever knows,” she said in that sweet deep voice, “he’s
so good, he’d understand.”

Yes, he could see Jonathan, could hear Mm almost. “Of course if he
ever knew, he’d want this,” he agreed. “But as you say, he needn’t know.”

“Never!” she whispered.

And without more words, Ms arms about her, they hurried out of the
tavern, and she waited while he harnessed his horses to face the storm
again..

Mrs. Drear went back with Jonathan to make sure that the baby was
all right. Sue was nursing it and she had a slight start at the sight of that
small pale child at the dark breast. But she controlled herself. All sorts of
things happened, and one took them. But Sue, feeling that surprise upon
the quick of her fiesh, threw an end of her shawl over her breast

“ ’Twon’t be long I has to do this,” she said, her speech always the mix-
ture of slave and master pronunciation. “Fm weanin’ her a’ready on
cornstarch and water and cow’s milk. She’s right smart at suckin’ on a rag
out of a bottle. I got one of them fiat whisky bottles and washed it clean.”

“You’re doin’ a good job, I can see,” Mrs. Drear said politely.

Jonathan had gone straight into the bedroom, and now he came back
in his old clothes, Maggie clinging to his hand.

For all the world like a widower, Mrs. Drear thought, pitying him. She
thought of Judy, and her big nose itched as it always did when she was

226

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

irritated, and slie robbed it. The' mmote she got home she would get after
Judy hard.

you have eoough vittles, Jonathan?” she' asked.

.. ;**Yes, thanks,” Jonathan said. He could not mention Judy's name, so
deep was Ms hurt that she had not come to see his mother buried.' But
aS' soon as the children were fed he would go to the hotel
' *^ri! bring you a loaf of bread tomorrow,” Mrs. Drear said. ■

^'Thank you,” Jonathan replied.

: She looked around on the family. Ruth was taking off her coat It was
her, mother's , old one, and she bit her lips and turned away to^ hide her
tears.' Jamie stood by the fire, warming his hands.

■ '‘Nothin* else?” Mrs. Drear asked.

“I reckon we can manage,” Jonathan replied. He tried to smile and
found it too difficult. “I may be up along a little later,” he said.

“Do,” Mrs. Drear answered heartily. “If 11 be good for you.”

She left them then and plodded her way through the heightening wind
and snow. A smaller woman might have been swept from the boardwalk,
but she had fought her way through too many blizzards to feed beasts and
to care for sick human beings. She knew how to draw her shawl across
her face and make a shelter for breathing and how not to shrink from the
wind but to breast it. Nevertheless the hot liquorish smell of the warm
hotel had never seemed more welcoming than now as she stepped Into it

“Pour me out a mug, Henry,” she gasped. Her head swam with the
warmth after the biting cold. A few men of Median were in the room—
Lew and Adam Cobb, Bill WMte and Samuel Hasty, and two newcomers
this year who, though not in Median properly, had the nearest farms. She
knew them all and paid no attention to them.

“Where’s Judy?” she asked truculently.

“Ain’t seen her, Mde nor hair,” Henry replied.

Mrs. Drear marched toward Judy’s room. “Fm goin’ to tell ’er what I
think of her for not cornin’ to the funeral,” she cried loudly. Let her hear,
she thought. She threw open the door of Judy’s little room and glanced
about it. Somehow Judy bad managed to make it the only pretty room in
the house. All her small belongings were there, the lace-edged bureau
cover, the embroidered cloth on the table, cushions in the one old rocking
chair, piiiow covers and a spread over the bed, and ruffled curtains across
the windows. They were the things she carried with her everywhere to
transform, as far as she was able, the dreariness she found inevitably about
her.

“\¥here’s the girl hidin’ herself?” Mrs. Drear shouted. Her black bonnet
fell away as she hurried to look in the wardrobe. There hung Judy’s scant
store of dresses, all clean, all neat, '“She ain’t took nothin’, so she must '
be around,” she muttered. She turned to the men gaping at the door. “You
reckon she could ha’ got lost just goin’ to the funeral?” she asked aghast.

“Looks that-a-way,” Lew said slowly.

THE TOWNSMAN

■227

'^Tlieii'.git out, every mm alive of you/’ she shouted, ‘This hyerel! about
iuish Jonathan,” She paused, “But I reckon hell, have to be told,. Henry,
you ..go and do the tellinV* she said.

■Th.e.search for. Judy upon the plains Jonathan led with, such' ierce vigor
that' never afterward did the people of Median think of him as a medium^
sized fellow with quiet ways and a gentle voice. He was a lame , scorching
them with his anger, a general driving them beyond their duty, a gi.a.nt .of
endurance and anger. ■

■“'No, we’i! not rest,” he shouted at midnight when they staggered hack:
to the hotel. His eyes burned at the bottom of their sockets, his lips were
cracked and his face gray w:ith cold. His pale hair was stiff with a .fringe
of ice under Ms cap. He drank off a cupful of wMsky neat, “Shame on us,,
great men, if we canl stand the blizzard a delicate girl is lost in!”

Jamie, who had been about to speak, did not. He had take,n his full part
with the men and could go on again as soon as he was warm, . though It
seemed waste to keep looking. Mrs, Drear in her purple flannel wrapper
and her braid screwed on her head brewed them coffee in grim silence
and watched them go out again. Then she crawled between the gray blan-
kets of her bed and lay waiting.

I can’t think that Judy is in any real hardship, she thought. I can’t tMnk
she’d get to any place of sufferin’ without savin’ herself before she
reached it.

She half-expected Judy to walk in, her garments arranged as neatly as
ever. But she did not. Long after the dull sunrise the men came back
exhausted. She woke from a doze and climbed out of her bed, screwing
her braid up again, and pinned an old black skirt over her nightgown.

“Any luck?” she asked Henry.

“Nope”

“I’ll bet she ain’t dead,” she retorted

He gave her a slow wink with a half-frozen eyelid. “1 ain’t bettin’
against you,” he said. The little icicles in his long moustache clinked in
m.inute music. ; ■ ■

“But Jonathan’li take it like sure death,” Mrs. Drear groaned.

“He does a’rea.dy,” Henry replied.

In the sod house it was so still, so warm, that for a wild moment Jon-
athan thought, She’s here! She had come, perhaps, and made this warmth
for him. There was the smell of bacon frying and of boiling coffee.

“Sit down, Jamie,” he ordered his brother. “You’re beat out.”

“No, I ain’t,” Jamie gasped. But .he sat down. He’d have said he was
stronger than Jonathan any day, but Jonathan had stood the night better
than any of them. Thia-lipped, white-faced, .he still moved with energy,
and Ms pale eyes burned.

“Fit eat and go out again,” he said. -

228 .

AMERICAN TRIP.TyCH

“You’re "foolisb,” lamie' retorted. “Ifs comia’ oa heavier.”, ■

■ it was* and Joaatliaii knew it. But nothiiig could have kept him here.,
while he thought of Judy, struggling through the storm. She must have
.been.' blows out of her way like a little ship at sea^ he though^ groaning
to hitri self. Great men were sometimes blown across the prairie miles out
.of thek way.

“You ain’t goki’ out again, Jonathan GoodMel”

He jumped at the' unexpected voice. Someone came out of the bedroom.
It was Katie, the baby in her arms, and he faltered in his surprise.

“Katie! Why, ifs— it’s terrible good of you to he here.”

“No, it ain’t,” she said in the prim childish voice with which she had so
often contradicted him though now it came oddly from her new, height.,
“I thought to m3^se!f that I brung the twins through when they was new-
born and I cud be of use here, helpin’ Ruth. Ma can spare me now, ours
are ''so big.”

She handled the child with brisk certainty which gave it content. It lay
with its small face against her flat young breast, and looked at her and
yawned. Jonathan had scarcely seen this child.

“How is she?” he asked.

“She’s as good as gold,” Katie said heartily. Her plain brown face grew
soft “She sucks the sugar rag wonderful. You needn’t worry a mite.”

“I don’t,” he said bluntly. “I can’t.”

She did not answer this. But when Ruth came in at this moment with
Maggie washed and dressed and her red hak in round tight curls, she gave
her the baby and busied herself with breakfast. Jonathan ate, not wanting
to talk further. Food choked him, and yet he knew be must have it. He tried
not to hear the wind rising in howls about the house or to see the darkness
growing blacker against the windows. The sun had risen but the day was
not lighter for it. He would go, but he would not ask it of Jamie. When
he had eaten the food Katie had set before him, he rose and put Ms hand
on the block that barred the door. Only then did Katie speak. She called
to him sharply from the stove.

“If you don’t come back, what’s to be done with the children?”

He had never thought of not coming back. If she had begged him not
to go he would have pushed her aside, insisting on Ms sure return. But
when she put the question thus baldly to Ms responsibility he stopped short.
He might not come back, and then what would happen to these children,
to Ruth and Maggie and little newborn Mary?

He flung open the door to test the storm before he answered and was
blown across the room. They rushed together, he and Jamie and Katie,
through a sheet of icy snow and forced it shut again and pushed the bar.
And this he knew was the answer. He went headlong into the bedroom
and flung himself upon the bed, and to the bitterest of death he gave up
Judy.

THE TOWNSMAN

229

Judy, in a little, sod house less than twenty miles from Topeka, was
.sitting, at breakfast with E¥an an.d the owner of the house. She had slept
fairly well upon a hay m.attr®s in. the bunk while Evan. and. Joe slept In.
blan.kets o.ii the ioor. The horses were in shelter on the leeward sldC' Of t.he
house. ■ ■

^Traveiin’ to Topeka, be ya?” Joe inquired.

,“We are/VEvan said.

He glanced at Judy*s left hand. From somewhere, to his wonder, she
had produced a plain gold wedding ring, and it was now upon her han.cl.
Did she keep wedding rings ready for such need? He asked himself the
question sarcastically .and saw with unwilling eyes and a sullenly stirring
heart how fresh she looked, and how neat., though she .had slept in her
clothes. He had been sleepless. Once when the hre flared after fresh fuel,
he had gone to look at her in the bunk. She was sleeping in. such sweet
silence as he had never seen upon a human being. It was impossible to
believe ill of her, his love told his reason.

''You live In Topeka?” Joe asked. He was hungry for talk but he had
to screw talk out of these two, he thought.

“Yes,” Judy said. She had cooked the breakfast and made saleratus
biscuit. Joe took his fifth.

“Shore is good to have home cookin’ again,” he said. “I don’t wish you
folks bad luck about the storm, but let ’er rip, says I!” He smiled through
a snap of teeth at Judy, and she smiled back.

“I’ll make an Indian pudden for dinner,” she said sweetly.

“It’s pyore luck the storm blew you my way, ma’am,” Joe said.

But she was not quite saved, she thought. Everything depended on how
she held Evan in this storm. If her sure instinct failed, if she could not
conquer Ms remorse— no, fight it at its very root— he could leave her yet
for Jonathan’s sake. His love for Jonathan was stronger at bottom than
what he felt for her. She saw it this morning in the coolness of his hand
and the aversion of his eyes, and she accepted it without jealousy, though
with wonder. What had Jonathan in him to make a man like Evan love
him so well? '

She busied herself in small slight ways all day in the wretched sod
house, always shy and quiet, saying almost nothing to Evan, but looking at
him often with large eyes that weighed him, he thought, feeling them upon
him, ' in -some secret judgment of her own. His pride was pricked.

“Not sorry, are you?” he asked when in the afternoon Joe fell asleep.

She gave him her . wordless Tovely smile' and crept against his breast
and waited. When she felt Ms heart begin to beat harder under her cheek,
she took courage. She was going to be all right.

“I have no one in the world,” she murmured, “I am all alone, except
for you.”

“No going back?” he asked,

“I can’t,” she whispered. She tightened her arms about him and lifted

■230

AMERICAN triptych:

her lace. ‘^Eyce 'M yoo, should die, or if yo'U should leave me-Fd never, go
back.”' ■ ■ ■ ■

■: «Whyr

■'■'■^'^■■’TwouM be wrong. I know it now.”

■ He bent 'to lay Ms cheek upon her soft bright hair, and she put her hand
to' his lips.. It was then he felt the ring.

“Where did you get that ring just when we needed it most?”

“It is my mothefs. I wear it on a ribbon about my neck, ever since
she died.”

She was so right in all her ways, things came about so rightly for . her
that the belief In the inevitability of thek' love overwhelmed every other
feeling in him .again today as it 'had yesterday.

“You’re sweet,” he murmured, “you’re perfect”

She smiled and swept her lashes downward and felt upon her lips his hot,
strong. Mss.

Now this will last, she thought. Anyway, until we’re there. .

In her own wry way, Jonathan thought heavily, Katie was perfect. At
the end of the second day he knew he could not have lived out the storm
without her. If he had been shut up in the sod house with Jamie, reminding
him at every movement and word of Clyde, he would have come to
quarrels with him. Maggie’s incessant chatter, her meddling fingers and
bustling ways, would have tried him sorely, for Ruth could do nothing
with her, and besides Ruth was absorbed now in little Mary. And what
would have made him most weary and angry together would have been
the single sorrow of this family of his for thek mother, a sorrow subdued
in him to his loss of Judy. For that she was lost he was now convinced.
Unless she happened upon the shelter of a farmhouse, she could never have
outlived the storm. But he had visited every farmhouse near Median when
they had searched for her, and beyond that she must have perished. True,
other men hearing of her loss had pushed out beyond that, and there was
the frailest of hope that when the storm had quieted, word would come
in that she was found. But his native melancholy did not allow him to build
upon this hope.

Through all his suffering and silence Katie moved serenely, managing
everything well. She knew his trouble, but she did not once speak of it.
It would have been intolerable had she spoken. But she spoke to him very
little, and only of something she wanted done.

THE TOWNSMAN

231

*^Caa you fetch ia more chips, Jonathan? We mustn’t let the fire down.”
He felt his way around the corner of the house, grateful for the buffalo
■chips the half-breed chEdren had pEed there as pay for their winter’s
schooling. He disliked their ■ ammoniac odor as they burned, and he seldom,
used them, but they burned and gave out warmth now, and he was glad he
had not refused them as he had nearly done when the,, child,reii brought
them first. He had wanted to spare their feelings of being e?en poorer
than the others. But Katie put the chips into the stove neatly with a bit of
paper between her thumb and finger. ■

*They make a good heat for bakin’,”, she said.

Somehow she created order in the home and order in their sorrow, too.
Her intensity in small activities, her very energy in cleaning and' washing
and cooking subdued the possibility of emotion; and Jonathan, engulfed io,
his tragedy, clung to this sharp and practical presence. Life had to go on,
Katie made him feel. Eating and sleeping and washing and ,cookmg and
caring for chEdren— they went on, though all else were lost. Slowly he began
to take his share in the work while he waited for the storm to pass. And
at last he was able to eat a little and to sleep fitfully and to plan in the
night as he lay on a pallet before the fire that he would go out the first
day that Henry Drear would let him have a horse and ask at every house
upon the plains for news of Judy. And yet, he thought, perplexed, they
would brings news in to Median, and would he miss it if he went? He
might wait two days, he decided at last. That would give them time.

He steadied himself against that decision, and when the storm cleared
he stuck to it though every bone in him ached for action. Then before
the next day was over the first maE came in from Topeka, Jamie, gone to
the hotel to ask for transportation westward, brought back a letter for him.
Jonathan took it and saw upon it Judy’s writing.

He stared at it and looked about for privacy. There was none anywhere
in his house, and he went outside into the silent sunlit snow and, standing
with his back against the wall, he tore open the envelope.

*'Dear Jonathan:” The thin paper crackled in his trembling hands, “It is
best to tell you straight out that I went away because I could not marry
you. It came over me like that when I was ready to come to the funeral.
So I took seat in a wagon that happened then to be going to Topeka. I
wEl find some work here. Forgive me E you can, but whether or not you
can, I know I am right, and it is kindest in the end to both. So I give you
no address because I don’t wish to be found. Judy.”

He crushed the letter and held it in his hand and stood staring out over
the endless snow. The sky was brilliantly blue, and the whiteness stabbed
Ms eyes, but he felt nothing. He was beyond pain any more, having suffered
to what he could endure. This was beyond.

She doesn’t say why, he thought stupidly. But Judy never said why she
did anything. And when k any letter she had ever written him had she
told him anything? His mouth went dry, and be felt suddenly sick, as

thougli bis being must empty itself of everything. In tbe wrenching of Ms
hesh he groaned' and leaned his head against the, house. Oh, If "he need
never enter that house again! If he could' but walk on and on across that
endlessness before' him and in its final emptiness ,be lost!

But the door of his house 'Opened, and Katie's voice fiew out, “Jonathan!
Dinner!” She thrust out her head and saw him. “What’s the matter with
you?” she cried. "And he who had not wanted to mention his trouble to her,
now felt that someone must know because he could not endure Ms loneli-
ness otherwise. ,He put out his hand with the letter crushed Into the palm,
and she took it. He' heard the faint crackling as he stared on into that
blind white space, , and there was silence while she read. Then he heard
the sharp sound of paper tom to' bits and felt his hand seized by her rough
hand.

*^You come right in and get your food while it’s hot,” she said.

Between Jonathan and Katie there was now this secret of Ms broken
love. Neither spoke of it, but it was in each of them, though not by any
jot of change in Katie could Jonathan discern it in her. Every change was
in himself. He was so bottomlessly lost in the emptiness in Mmseif that all
he did was useless, and he never stopped working from his waking at day-
light to his sleep when sick fatigue compelled him to it. He brimmed every
moment, grateful to school children; grateful to little Mary, who must be
fed and cleaned and put to sleep; grateful to Maggie, meddling every-
where at once. He managed somehow all this life under one roof, though
how he would have managed it if Katie had not come morning and night
to keep all straight was a thing he thought about. For Ruth was not good
at doing several things together. With the tenderest heart and the softest
ways and a will always sweet and ready to lend itself to another’s, she
seemed never to have anything fimshed. Work as she did, she would still
by noon have not one full task ended~the dinner stewing, but half the
morning dishes not washed; the floor swept but a bed not made; Maggie
fed, but her red mane of curls not brushed and her face unwashed. Yet
Katie in an hour of energy could have the home docile and all of them
cleaned and fed.

It was injustice to her goodness that, with knowledge of all she did, no
one was grateful to her. But she could at the same time do a kindness
with her hands and snatch it away with her tongue. A strange thing in
women, Jonathan thought sorrowfully, that Judy who did nothing for any-
body and who had wounded him for life he would love and long for
because of her lovely looks and her sweet voice and her gentle ways. And
though Katie was better than Judy, he was on certain days in agony until
she was gone, though she was so kind always to Mm. He felt every edge
in her voice and saw every abruptness of her tMn sharply shaped frame,

“Ruth, why don’t you do like I told you and save the scraps of fat for
soap? Waste not, want not.”

232

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

THE TOWNSMAN

233,

.^“Maggie, yoE’re a bad girl. Don’t poke' the baby’s eye/’

“Jamie, there’s plenty to do, around' here for everybody 'without yon
sittin’ waitin’ to, go West Hurry yonrself and go out 'and hunt chips, if
nothin’ , else. I do despise lazin,essl”

• When at , last the roads opened enough for a horse to go' through, she
made no, pretense at not being thankful to have Jamie gone. S,he' disliked
his carelessness and hearty appetite and the dirty feet he always forgot to
wipe, ,

And yet she could not leave Jonathan alone either. If she stayed ' to
share the midday meal she often cooked, she was at Jonathan to eat when
he could scarcely swallow. His wish for food had left him, and yet she
made him eat.

“Mow, Jonathan, you ain’t goin’ to sit there spurnin’- good food. You
eat that good boiled meat. Take a real slice of it. Here, 111 ix your plate
for you.”

His stomach, always too delicate for food when his mind was despond-
ing, turned against the great plate she set before him, the slabs of yellow
com bread, the heaped potatoes and salt pork. He said once, “I could eat
some of Mother’s scones if she was here to make them,” and Katie said,
meaning only kindness, “Well, she ain’t, and I’m sorry to say it but you’ll
just have to eat what you got!”

He must eat what he had. The words took on a sad symbolism in these
days when he made symbols out of everything as he tried to know what
he should do.

Should he not go to Topeka and look for Judy? But how, except to search
from house to house? And who would teach school and who tend this
house? And then he thought how Judy herself had cut him off.

Days passed and Evan did not come back to Median. Another blizzard
came and went, bringing six days when he had no school and two days
when Katie even could not come and he fed the baby on thinned gruel
for milk. It was a bitter winter for blizzards, and Jonathan blamed them
when Evan delayed. At first he was glad that Evan was not there to prove
himself right about Judy. Then he came to longing for Evan’s comfort and
his friendship and his talk. He could always forget everything in the talk
he and Evan had together, and there was not another in Median who had
such thoughts as he and Evan had. If Evan came Fd tell him everything
and feel better, he thought.

But Evan did not come. February ended with a handful of mild days
before March burst in, and then something began to trickle back to Median
about Evan and Judy. A distant farmer, George Lacey, had gone to the
city to set right a boundary to his land that the railroad had cut off, and
the lawyer for the railroad was Evan. He went in the company offices
but found it was late and the lawyer wasn’t there, so he got his address and
went to his house. “It was a good brick house, square, and set back from

234 ;

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Ifie.streetj^ and Ms wife opened it, a, soft-spoken woman she, was, all dressed
apvlike a lady,^^ George' said, around the sto¥e at the store,
ain't married!” Lew- roared.,,

“.He shore' is,” George Lacey said.

„ , “Why, why in heck' didn’t he tell us?”

' “Don’t kao-w,” George Lacey said. “I didn’t know him weli—just ..saw
-.him here maybe once or twice.”

“Did you hear her name?” Lew asked. He was weighing a slice of store
cheese, and his eyes were on the scales.

“He called her Judy or Julie, or suthin’,” George Lacey said. The cheese
was Ms, and he picked off a piece and ate it'

“Judy!” Lew whispered. “Did she have big black eyes?”

“Yep-I noticed ’em. Why, you know her?” -

“Mebbe.” Lew’s mouth shut into a downward line between Ms flat, un-
shaven cheeks.

He took the news in to dinner with him. Katie was home that day.
Though she could not have let Jonathan know it, he had hurt her in the
morning by a chance gruffness. She had said, “Don’t let them school chil-
dren traipse In here with their feet ail mud, Jonathan. There’s no sense to
it. Fve tied some straw together for ’em to rub their shoes on.”

And he, who seldom spoke at all, had answered quickly, “I have enough
to teach their heads without bothering about their feet.”

“You don’t scrub after ’em— ” she began, but he had not let her go on.

“Give over, Katie, do. There’s things I care more for than scrubbin’ and
cleanin’.”

So she had untied her apron and gone home then and there and, though
he had shouted after her to come back, she had not come back.

“Fve heard somethin’ damned queer,” Lew said slowly to Ms wife at
dinner, staring at nothing while he chewed.

“Mr. Merridy, I wish you wouldn’t swear before the children,” Mrs.
Merridy said.

“This is just plain cussedness I can’t help swearin* about,” Lew said.
He looked at his wife solemnly. “Evan and Judy’re married.”

Mrs. Merridy choked on her tea. “They’re never, Lew Merridyl”

“Shore as Fm born they are,” Lew said. “And if Evan ever shows his
face in Median again, Fil take a shotgun to him.”

Katie said not a word. Into her freckled face there crept a deep color.
She stopped eating and put her hands tightly clasped in her lap.

“Who’s gonna tell Jonathan?” she asked.

“I dunno,” Lew said. “It’s plumb awful, that’s what it is. Why’nt you
tell him, Katie? You’re there most every day.”

“I couldn’t—” Katie said, her throat tight.

“FlI go and see Drear,” Lew said.

He lumbered over to the tavern after his dinner, and in an hour all
Median knew except Jonathan and nobody wanted to tell him, and then

THE' TOWNSMAN

235 '

loaatliaja Mmseif came m, as Me often did oa a late Satorday afteraooa,;
merely to see men’s faces and sit and drink a little with them, and he made
the excuse of a loaf of Mrs, Drear’s salt-rising bread.

When he came into the room tonight' silence fell upon the half-dozen
men as though he were a stranger..' Then they were too quick to greet him
and their voices too, hearty. An,d then Mrs. Drear put her head out of .the
kitchen to see' who it was. Her face grew stem.

**You, Jonathan, come here,” she said.

He went into the kitchen, and she shut the door. ‘‘Sit down,” she said.
“Now listen. You’ve, got to know somethin’. It’s terrib.le— ”

“Nothing’s' happened to Jamie, has it?”

“No, it’s what’s : happened to you. Judy’s married Evan.”

Her face before his eyes swam and receded, was lost and appeared
again.. ,

“Evan!” he. whispered.,

“Here-you drink this.” She put her own cup of beer before him. But
he did not see it

“But— but— Evan— hated her,” he gasped. “At least, no one could hate
her but— but— ”

“That’s it, I guess he didn’t,” she said. “Now, Jonathan, you take it like a
man. There’s other girls as good and much better. It’s a pity you had to
see Judy first. Every man’s got to see one woman first, and he thinks that’s
all there is. And they all see somebody like Judy. Look at my Henry.
What does he do but fall in love with a low-down girl from the East on
her way to Calif orny and she stays here and swears Jennet was his, and
then runs off and leaves him with a month-old baby. Where’d be be if I
hadn’t took pity on him and answered his advertisement for a good cook
and took care of the motherless child and married him and give him a
home?” Her face quivered. “But do you think he’s forgotten how that slut
looked? No, he’ll say, ‘Jennet’s pretty, like her maw.’ He’ll say it till he
dies,”

Jonathan listened and heard nothing. Nothing that had ever happened
had anything to do With him. He rose to his feet, his eyes on the ground.

“Thanks,” he said vaguely, and then walked to the door, and through
the silence in the other room he went outside. He stood hesitating, longing
to be gone anywhere into the world so that he was not here. But ahead of
him and around him the prairie lay purple under a purple sky. In the west
there was still a glow, but so dull that it did not dim the sharp stars.
There was nowhere to go. The prairie cut him off like an ocean. He had
only his house, and after a moment he buttoned bis coat and pulled down
his hat and went the road he knew the best.

At the door of his house he met Katie. When she saw him enter the
hotel, she had' put her mother’s old red shawl over her head and run
down the boardwalk to his house. She did not want to meet him, nor have
him see her; but she could make sure, while he was gone, that everything

236

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH

was right in the house, aod his supper cooked. As she ran through the store
she took up a tiu can of fruit, peaches from the East, and planned how she
would open them into' a bowl for a dessert. She worked in furious silence
, to : tidy the rooms for his coming aod fed the baby and put her into her
box and then washed Maggie after. her supper' and' put her to, bed, and
last she mended the, fire and took a moment to whisper furiously to Ruth,
‘'You do like I said about them peaches—don’t tel! 1m I brung them, but
say they’re from my „pop.*’ .

“All right, Katie, Ruth said, bewildered,

Alt this had made her late, and so she met Jonathan at the door when
she opened It. He looked down at her face, shadowy under the red' shawl.
In the twilight he could scarcely see her features.. But he could feel her
sturdy presence, and he knew her goodness.

“You’Ye been in to clear me up again, eh, Katie?'* he said somberly.
His hands were in his pockets and his collar turned up, but the wind blew
bitter ' o?€r the plains. ■

“Nothin’ much,” she said, her lips dry.

“Yes, it is much,” he said suddenly. “It’s veiy much. If s more than
anyone in the world would do for me.” He took his hands out of his
pockets and put them on her thin, sloping shoulders. “So I ask you, Katie
—will you be my wife?”

She stood under his hands for one brief moment, her breath so tight it
caught in her lungs. Then she gasped and ducked and went running up
the walk in the darkness and left him with neither yes nor no. And he
stood looking after her.

Why not? he thought heavily. It doesn’t matter now.

He went into his house and ate his food and knew where the peaches
came from without asking. He was very gentle to Ruth and wiped the
dishes for her, and then he said, “Would you mind if I left you a bit,

"Ruth?”":",.'

“No, not if ifs not long,” she said.

“It w^on’t be long,” he said gravely.

He lit his lantern and through the darkness plodded back to Lew’s store
and opened the door. It was Saturday night, and Median men were still
there. Lew was behind the counter near the cracker barrel, but he came
out and Jonathan drew him outside the door.

“Is Katie at home?” he asked.

“She’s gone to bed,” Lew said. “Came in a while back and said she felt
bad.”

“Then I won’t disturb her, Lew. I must tell you— I asked her to be my

wife.”

“Katie?” Lew’s thick jaw dropped. “See here, Jonathan, don’t you go on
a rebound. If II shore be a mistake—”

“No-no,” Jonathan broke in, “ifs not that. You tel! her, Lew, that I

THE TOWNSMAN' 237

told, you, and tel, her FI, come tomorrow for her answer, and I hope with—
wifh-all ,iny heart, tell, her,, that .she’l have me.”'

He bolted into, the da.rkii,ess and left Lew standing there. He was glad
he had not 'seen her. It would give Mm time. There was all night : ahead.

He spent a long eYe,!img 'with Ruth. It was unexpectedly quiet an.d ,good,,
in' spite of the . pain in Ms breast. That pain was for something over and,
ended. Pain might „never end, but he was going on wdth life, w,hatever.,it
was.

He mended the fire and drew the curtains :hls -mother, had made.. No
one drew curta,ins in Median, but tonight he wanted to shut out the prairie
and shut Mmseif in with these three of .Ms own flesh and blood. He - put
fresh fuel into the. tin. stove, and sat down in a rocking chair w%!ch' 'Katie
had brought one .day for Mem to sit in 'and rock the baby. Though many'
houses in Median had rocking chairs, he had felt them fooi:ish furniture.

^T'' can’t sit swinging .my legs like I was on -a fence,”' he had always said.

This chair had a woven reed bottom, and -'Katie had put an old' blue
gingham cushion on it, and now it felt easy under Mm. He sat In it, swinging
gently, and after a while he talked with 'Ruth as he had not talked since
their mother died, asking her questions of those months when his mother
had been away from him and piecing together the bits of her lie that
Ruth thought to tell When he had gone to bed, for the first time in nights
past he felt he could sleep. He had reached some sort of bottom to suffer-
ing. Nothing worse can happen to me, he thought. From now on it must
be up.

He thought quietly of Katie and of how he would speak to her tomorrow,
and then he was too drowsy to plan. It’ll come natural between us, some-
how, he thought without excitement.

After long sleep he woke, and after a moment’s wild agony he remem-
bered. He rose and washed himself and put on his second-best suit and
then, happening to put Ms hand to Ms cheek, stayed to shave himself. My
cheek’ll fee! as rough tO' Katie, he thought

Without hurrying he ate and tidied up after himself, for Maggie had
Ruth up long before; and then he put on Ms hat and walked slowly up the
boardwalk. It was a forward day for March, and more like April. The air
was clear with sun, though under the boards the mud was bottomless with
melting snow. But he kept Mmseif clean of it and went straight into the
store and knocked on the door of Lew’s house behind it.

Lew himself opened the door. He looked solemn. *^Come in, Jonathan,”
he said and coughed behind Ms hand. ‘‘Lula, here’s Jonathan.”

Mrs. Merridy was sitting on the sofa in her best black dress. “Howdy,
Jonathan, come in,” she said.

They shook hands with Mm as though he were a stranger, and he felt
strange and put an end to it

“Is Katie here?” he asked simply.

238 ■

AMERICAN, TRIPTYCH

‘"She’s In the ,p,arIor,” Lew said gently.

He went into the parlor, where he had never sat down m his life. It
was the only parlor in Median, and there had been no occaslo,n since his
: coming grand enough for its' use. But Katie, was sitting there now on the
horsehair sofa, her' hands clasped in the lap of her brown poplin dress; She
looked at him wretchedly, two bri^t red spots in her cheeks; and, though
she had brushed her brown hair smoothly into the coE upon her head and
put a, narrow collar of white lace at her diroat, she looked as she always
had. She was one of those women who, no matter what they wear, always
look '.the- same. The thought grazed his mind, and he let it pass, .It did not
matter. He sat down beside her and took one of her hands. It felt stiff and
unwilling, but her fingers quivered when they touched his.

■ ""Have you made up your mind, Katle?’^ he asked.

She nodded, and he saw that her face was white.

“I hope ifs yes/’ he said.

She nodded again, her mouth too dry for speech.

He hesitated and in his bosom felt his heart give one last turn of agony.
But that was all. In the deepest sEence he leaned and kissed her cheek,
and they sat a moment hand in hand. Then he said gently, “Shall we go
and teE your folks?”

She rose at once and with her hand stiM in his he led her out.

“Ifs settled,” he said to Lew and Mrs. Merridy.

They stood up and put out then hands to him, and he shook them, one
after the other, and then they all sat down and Lew cleared his throat.

“Now thafs over,” he said, “and I—”

But Mrs. Merridy broke in sharply, “Katie, go and see what’s burning.
I declare, if I forgot to add water to the stew—”

Katie suddenly looked herself. “Oh, MawF^ she cried, and rushed out of
the room.

But in the night, that second night, he woke to scarify himself. What
had he done so quickly? He had rushed to his own crucifixion, without
waiting to find even if it were necessary. He should have gone to Topeka
and seen for himself whether the thing were true or not. He had not even
asked Lew how the news had come. He should have found Evan and asked
him If Judy was his wife. He lay writhing at what he had done to himself.
It was too late. Was it not too late? If Judy was stEl free, if he could
prevail upon her and bring her back to him— in the stiff night any madness
seemed possible. But he could never bring her to Median. Median would
stand by the Merridys and spew him out.

He thought on, sleep far from him. And the more he thought, the more
Inevitable it seemed to him that Evan and Judy were together. Their seem-
ing hate was clear to him. They were trying not to call it love, he thought.
In a small way, but the same, he had once hated Jennet like that.

Anyway, Fll write, be thought grimly. He sent a letter to Evan that day.

THE TOWNSMAN'

239

*'Evaii, where, is Indy? Jonathan.”

This, was all he wanted of Evan.

In the time it took any letter to- come and go, Evan’s letter, came back,
many lines,, written, and crossed, in that fluent and' familiar script.

You, must know, dear -old Jon,, that I did not ta,ke her until she. had
decided .that she had m,ade a mistake, i found her ready to ,ru,ii away—
she Insists that had she never seen me the results would have been the
.same so far. as you are concerned— . Believe me always unchanged,— and
eager to give you any help. Would you like a position, in the high, school
here at a good salary? I might be able to secure it for you—”

He .read the letter and. put it in, the stove and went out to iiid Stephen
Parry,

'When are you going to flnish my schoolhouse?” he de,manded. "Win-
ter’s nearly over, and I want to begin everything new this spring.”

“Fll git mahself right, to work,” Stephen prom,ised.

Judy was in her new home. It was a handsome house, spread to look its
best in a lawn unusually wide, though not much deeper than the house
as it stood back from the street. Four cottonwoods and two elms gave
shade and dignity, and there was a carriage block. In the afternoons the
colored man she had hired drove the carriage up to this block, and she
stepped in, her small ruffled parasol open over her head, and drove down
the street to Evan’s office to wait for him at the curb. She had not usually to
wait long. He came out briskly, very debonair in a frock coat, tail hat, and
a striped gray waistcoat and trousers, and took his place beside her. To-
gether they drove up the street, which was not yet paved, though it had
sidewalks and small new elm trees.

At such times Judy’s eyes were dewy with happiness. She was lovelier
than ever to look at, lovely to be in love with, Evan thought to himself.
He could not possibly have married a plain woman. Most— indeed, very
nearly all— of the time he was delighted with Judy, proud of her beauty
and prouder even of her quick instinct for rightness in any company. In
a public place she was easily the prettiest woman, but she was more. She
was the most quiet, and the other women were not usually quiet, and she
was the most graceful among women who were framed to angles or
heaviness.

When they were alone together in their new home, the fine details of
which had cost him more than he cared to think about, she was no less

240

AMERICAN ■■ TRIPTYCH

lovely^ EO less perfect NigM or day slie was amiablej 'passionate, when
he,dem.anc!ed' passio,ii and delicate when he did not.

He pianiied his first visit to his mother^s home with no terrors. Judy,
who could ■ahando.n her body to him without scruple, coiiid in the presence
of' other 'women be as virgin as a young girl He took her to New Orleans
In May and bought her summer dresses that billowed about her little waist
and great drooping hats under which her eyes were like dark pansies. ,

“Very nice,” Mrs. Bayne said, surveying her. “I didn’t think they could,
do as well in Kansas, Evan. .Judy, your skin is good as Laura’s.”

Judy laughed her fresh low laughter..'*! wasn’t raised In Kansas,” she
said.

"Where?” Mrs. Bayne demanded.

“Nowhere in particular,” she said demurely, S',he made no pretense of
her family, although she never spoke now of Joel. Had he not left her?

' And Evan never admired her with more reason than he did in Ms
mother’s home. If she was not a lady, she played herself one so well that
to the w^orld there was no difference. There was mirth mingled with Ms
admiration when he drew her behind the big cape Jessamine bush in his
mother’s front yard, and when he kissed her there was still excitement in
it It was as exciting as though he stole the kisses when he placed the
flowers between her round breasts.

But sometimes, in the night, in their own house, when she joined so
cheerfully in Ms passion, he remembered how coolly she had put Jonathan
away, how easily come to him. He loved her body and would have loved
her wholly as well, if he could have forgotten altogether that she had
betrayed his friend. But he could not always forget, and under their life
together there stayed alive the thin and secret nerve that quivered with
distrust of her.

But of this Judy knew nothing. She lay in his arms in the pleasant
emptiness which was her happiness. Ahead of her the days stretched full
of delight. Small changes in her furniture, ffowers to be arranged in a new
vase, lace to sew into her wine-red taffeta dress, the direction of the black
woman Evan had hired for the housework— all were things to be done with
joy and without responsibility.

"I wish Mama could see me now,” she said suddenly to Evan.

"Not quite now!” he said teasingly. He tousled her curling hair loose
upon Ms pillow, and when she laughed he gathered her into Ms arms in
fierce delight. She had the trick of making herself so soft, so yielding when
he did this, that even her bones melted. He felt only softness, and clinging,
and he smelled her faint perfume. Oh, she was good enough for Mm^ he
thought, or very nearly, having already asked himself the question and in
one way and another answered it.

He found Jonathan’s letter on his desk at. the offices of the Santa Fe
railroad company the next day. He had made the desk a permanent part of

THE TOWNSMAN

2 , 4 !

those offices hecaese of Ms bri!.liaEt defease of the railroad’s rig,lit to cross
a mm\ land ^‘Progress, the right of the oatioa over the privilege, of., an
Individual.” These ,werc words he ,had dwelt upon ardently. Besides, wa.s
not the whole West /open? A man, could always move on if he was d,is»
satisied.

He wal,l:ed gaily through the sunshine of the morning, twirling Ms cane
and tMnking of how Judy had looked in a cream-colored lace peignoir .as
she sat behind the silver, coffee service that had been his ,mother’s wedding
present. In such a mood he had not been disturbed by Jonathan’s letter
,,for more than the mo,ment it, took h,im to read it. And the moment after,'
he was .thinking, half-pityingly and with not 'too much- remorse to bear, of
what he could do for Mm— a job, perhaps in the city school, and cash for
pay instead of corn meal and buffalo chips and potatoes and black molas-
ses. If Jonathan' were, here, he could help him, in other ways, ,not to make
amends, but to show. Mm that a woman was not cause for change in friend-
ship between men. There might be spice, even, he thought gaily, as years
went by, In the memory that his best friend had once desperately loved his
wife.

When Jonathan’s reply came he shrugged and felt he had done all a mao
could do and had been refused.

Jonathan began the building of a new life that spring with zeal de-
termined by his mind. What the heart had not, the head could supply. He
told Katie, ‘*We shan’t be married until everytMng’s the way we want it,”

He told Lew, “I shall have everything for Katie the way I once planned
it— for the other.”

Lew, picking his teeth at the threshold of the store, threw him a look
from under the bushy eyebrows that met over his big nose,

^‘That’s only right, I reckon, and still I take it to be good of you.”

‘‘Katie deserves it more,” Jonathan said.

‘T reckon,” Lew said peaceably. He ruminated a moment and then went
on, “You don’t have to say nothin’ to me. You and Katie kin run your
own show. A man’s own marriage is all a man can tend to, and mine
ain’t done yet.”

The Sunday dinners were begun again, and Jonathan and Katie sat in
the parlor for a while, or if the day were fair they took a walk along the
river. He talked a great deal at these times, his arm about her shoulder or
her hand in Ms. He was always conscious until he fought it out of him of
the difference between Katie’s hand and Judy’s. Judy’s hand had curled
Into his with the angelic softness of a baby’s hand, but Katie’s was always
stiff. He looked at it one day. ‘‘A good working hand,” he said gently.
“A useful, kind hand, always busy.” He thought loyally that there was
something here more firm than the pink and cream of that hand which he
had once so passionately put to his lips. He never kissed Katie’s hand and
never would, perhaps.

242

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

Blit he talked to her as' he had never talked to Indy* Indy had always
put everything out of his head. With difficulty even had he thought of Ms
school. He could only see how Indy’s hair curled about her ears and how
smootMy her throat shaped into her lovely bosom. But when he was with
Katie, his mind built his plans and she, who always fell silent and' shy
at any hint of tenderness, replied quickly enough with good sense to all
he planned.

The schoolhouse grew, paid for by bonds the townsfolk put out. There
was not enough to pay for one of the newfangled basement stoves he had
read of in a school magazine to which he subscribed. He wanted it sorely,
for how would they keep a great two-story house warm otherwise? He
had a little money in the Farmer’s Bank in Topeka, saved to bring his
mother home. But Katie would not let him use it.

^*Once you begin usin’ our money for the school, there’ll be no end,”
she said, so definitely that he dared not disobey her.

He swallowed his pride and wrote to Evan, asking for a loan to buy the
stove, he being willing to offer his own note for security. Evan replied at
once with all his old gaiety. He was glad lonathan had turned to him,
though he had no money to lend. His own new house had cost him dear,
and he had wanted ludy to have all she liked. But he could arrange a
loan with the city bank, and he himself would give security.

Secretly he was glad to do this. He was in lonathan’s debt, and this put
Mm out of it. ‘T want to help you in any way I can,” he wrote lonathan,
and Jonathan wrote to thank him, making no mention either of Judy or of
Katie. Thus the two were friends again, though very distantly.

By midsummer the school building stood finished, a square frame build-
ing on a brick foundation, two-storied and roofed with tin. Inside it were
rooms with good windows, four rooms downstairs and four up. Jonathan
kept the small^t near the door for Ms office. He had advertised for
teachers in an eastern newspaper. A dozen letters reached him, and out
of them he chose two, one a man and one a woman.

Without planning to delay his marriage, he did delay even when the
schoolhouse was done. The sod house, he told Katie one Sunday, was too
small and dark.

"'When I come back out of my new office now, the sod house is like a
cave,” he said, "Besides, how will It hold us all, Katie? Ruth’s a young
woman nearly, and she and Maggie and little Mary should have a room
for themselves. And we should have a sitting room anyway and a kitchen.”

There was never any talk of not having the three children with them.
Neither he nor Katie thought of living alone. The end of it was that he
took out of the Farmer’s Bank in Topeka the money he had there— and
Katie was willing for this-and they bought from the township of Median
a lot next to his school big enough for a small one-story frame house. He
and Katie planned three bedrooms, a sitting room, a small kitchen, and a
front porch.

THE TOWNSMAN

243

like one of those newfangled rooms for bathing/' he said. People
in the .East were beginniiig to have bathrooms, an.d in the catalogues that
he .had ordered .for the school building he had seen pictures of .heavy,
wooden bathtubs .lined with metal and painted white.

‘‘Whoever heard of such a thin.g!” Katie cried. “A whole room to wash.,
.in, when there’s the kitchen, too? It’s waste/’'

So he let it go for the present, having indeed all he could do,, to build
the house. He helped to bu.ild it himself to save cost,' and. young M.atthew^
Cobb worked .with, him and Stephen through long summer . days and eve-
nings# . Matthew was nearly fifteen now, and as tall as he would ever be.
He '.had settled into a plain-faced boy approaching young .manhoo-d, a.nd be
talked quietly of buying a farm somewhere not too far .west whe.n hk'
earnings were enough. The boy’s eye was true, and he could see a window
frame Into a wall, without a slant. His fault was that all he did was done
too carefully, so that in no day did he ever do all that he had set himself,
and the kn.owledge that each day’s work dragged upon the next made him
always sober and anxious and pressed in mind; but that was scarcely a
fault in a young man, Jonathan thought.

He came to know Matthew very well that summer while they put up
the slender framework of the house and nailed the clapboards under the
tin roof and lathed and plastered the inner walls. Lew told Katie to choose
her wallpapers from his stock and, though what she chose were aE too
flowery for Jonathan’s plain taste, he kept silence. He had a constant sense
of some debt he owed her, as though he had done her an injustice, and
more and more he let her have her way. Yet when he searched himself
to find out what he did that was unjust, he could find nothing reasonable.
He knew that no other roan had asked to marry her# He knew that with
him she was safe and that his kindness would not fail, and that her father
and mother were grateful to Mm. It was on his wedding day, the last
Monday In October before school opened, that he discovered why forever
he would be in Katie’s debt.

When he had dreamed of that other marriage, it was with impatience
to have it done and over quickly and all guests gone and he and Judy alone
forever. But now it was not that marriage, and he let Median have Ms
wedding for its holiday. There was great talk about where it should be.

Mrs. Merridy cried out, ‘Tfs nothin’ but proper that a girl should be mar-
ried from her home.”

But the parlor was small, and Jonathan insisted doggedly that all Ms
pupils and their parents should come to his wedding. This, with what
was left of Median, made the parlor a mere closet. His own little new home
was no better. Besides, Katie would not have it there,

‘T don’t want to have a housecleanin* on my hands the first day after/’
she declared sensibly.

There remained the hotel, but it was crowded at this season with travel-

"244

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

" ers : westward aad, besides, there were too mmy things to be remembered
—Ms mother standing at the door with Artie in her arms, Jennet sitting at
the:^. table,, her head nponher arms, and Judy the night' she stood in the
holow of Ms arms— gazing at Evan, as, he remembered, now, with the
deep inward wrench that made him-'know pain was stili alive.

Then he found the place himself, stepping into the empty sunlit school-
house one day in early September. Why not. here? he thought, here, where
my work Is? There were no shadows in this house, no sadness. It was wait-
ing for its life to begin. Let it begin, then, with him. The benches Stephen
had made of pine boards shipped from the East smelled fresh and dean.
By opening the doors between, the rooms were big enough.. And they could
make a pulpit where the desk- stood. If it were ..too la.te in the year for
traveling prea,chers, he would hire a minist-er from Topeka to come for that
day.

He worked quietly at his desk until noon and then went home and on
the way passed by to see what Katie thought. He found her in her mother’s
kitchen stirring cucumbers In boiling vinegar and sugar on the stove.

^ Well be married in the schoolhouse, eh, Katie?’^ he said.

She had on a gray gingham apron that covered her neck to ioor, and
her face was red with the stove’s heat. She did not stop her stirring when
he came in, nor when he spoke.

‘‘Thafs a real good idea,” she said.

Out of the passing flocks of travelers, Median caught twelve new families
that year.

*Tfs the schoolhouse gets ’em,” Henry said. “A woman with kids sees a
school, and then heaven and hell and all her menfolk can’t drawr her past.”

He was cheerful because of a full house and the two teachers to board
all winter, and for a long time had ceased to blame Jonathan that Median
was not a cattle town. His hopes now were in the new railroad coming
westward,

^‘Though we might find gas or oil like some of these-hyere places do,”
he rumbled through his beard. ‘‘A town’s got to have somethin’ besides a
schoolhouse, Jonathan.”

“Find it— find it,” Jonathan said cheerfully. “School’s my share to
Median, and I’ll stick to it.”

There were already days when, ignoring moods, he thought Ms life solid
and good. He grew anxious now to have his wedding over. When it was,
a certain door would have dosed behind him, and there would be no open-
ing it. On the other side of it he and Katie would make their life. She loved
work and so did he, and of work there was plenty.

He did little himself toward that wedding day. Women of Median went
out into the prairies and gathered goldenrod and grasses, and Sue devised
a silver-papered bell to hang over the desk made Into a pulpit, and Katie
baked her own wedding cake and cut and sewed a wedding gown, not of

THE TOWNSMAN

245

wMie^ or what else could I wear a white dress at?” she said. She^ chose a
bright. bine silk that. Lew had in stock.

. And Jonathan kept his eye out for traveling preachers and picked up , by
chance a small humpbacked man. one day in the early fail, traiii.pi.ng west-
ward with his clothes tied in a bundle. He was dressed in dusty black, and
on Ms head was a wide black hat, and when he spoke he had a tw.ist to his
tongue that made Jonathan jump, it was‘ so familiar.

‘‘You’re EnglishF’ he shouted to the man’s good morning.

“Eh,, what if I am?” the man had retorted.

He had been .nailing a board to , one of the trees in the square; and
Jonathan, seeing it from his desk, had rushed out to stop him. The trees
were growing, and he was touchy about them. He begged water for them
In summer and shielded them in winter with brush he had the big boys cut
from the river banks.

“What are you about?” he had shouted'from the schoolhouse door.

“My Father’s business,” the little man cried back, and Jonathan saw the
board. It was smoothed and clean and on it were painted in bold black
letters, “Ye must be bom again.”

“Did you come all the way from England for this?” he asked, smiling.

“I did,” the man said. He had a strange, grim little weazened face. “God
sent me,” he said.

“We’re not heathen here,” Jonathan said.

“Not only heathens are sinners,” the man said.

“Are you a regular minister?” Jonathan inquired.

“Methodist, by God’s grace,” the man said fervently.

Jonathan laid hold of his crooked left arm. “Then I reckon God did
send you,” he said. “Will you stay and marry me to my young woman?”

“If it’s God’s will,” the man said calmly. With no ado, he dropped to his
knees before Jonathan’s legs and, screwing up his eyes and moving his
lips, he prayed silently for a minute or two and then rose and dusted off
his knees. “God says, do as you like this time, Paul Higgins. So 111 stay
and get rested up a bit. I’m fagged with walking. ’Tain’t every day I get
a ride, and I’ve mostly walked from Indiana.”

“Paul Higgins, eh?” Jonathan said. He was quietly astonished at this
small gnarled man who now chattered freely as though God had given him
permission.

“Christened Saul by my parents in England, but I was converted ten
years ago and changed to Paul. Ten years I been nailing God’s words to
trees all over this country. ’Twas on a tree Christ died, I figger, and to
trees men must look for their salvation. Though here I travel days on end
and never see a tree. Today I saw these trees sticMM up miles off, and so
I made for ’em, ‘Ye must be born again’ ’s my favorite, but I have others
too.”

He drew out of a sack other texts and laid them on the ground. “ ‘God

246

AMERICAN TMFTYCH

SO loved; of course, and ‘Where will you spend eternity’ and ‘Many, are
called but few are chosen’—” ■ '

‘‘I like Te must be born again’ the best;’ Jonathan : said, not knowing
whether to laugh or be grave.

“Eh, well, Ifs suitable to all occasions, ’’ the little preacher said. “There’s
no one so good he can’t he made better, Is how I igger it out. Where’E I
put up, mister? Will they be easy on me in Median, seein® Fm poor and a
minister of the gospel and has only what God moves folks’ hearts to give
me and there’s plenty of hearts beyond even Him, I can teE you?”

‘T daresay,” Jonathan said dryly. “Come with me.”

He led him to the hotel and found Henry Drear in his woodshed making
com whisky for the winter.

“Here’s our preacher,” he told him.

Henry stared and clapped the hunched shoulders halfway between Ms
own waist and shoulders.

“Well, suds!” he cried. “Bow’d you come by him?”

“God driven,” the Ettle man said simply.

Henry’s jaw dropped. “Well, I seen ’em all kinds,” he said, and added
his usual greeting to anyone who passed. “Come in and eat.”

The strange little man married them expertly enough. He had a book in
a torn cloth cover, but he did not read from it Under the big sEver beE he
was grotesque.

“I learned the burial service and the marriage and birth by heart,” he
told Jonathan as he stood waiting for the ceremony to begin. “I was ready
then, I Eggered, for anything people wanted.”

“Dearly beloved, we are gathered together— ” He had a sweet and plain-
tive voice, as reedy and clear as a wild bird’s.

Jonathan watched him, listened to him, and made Ms responses and
heard Katie’s. Her voice squeaked with earnestness when she said, “I do,”
and she put up her right hand and coughed behind it the polite two-syEabled
cough that women make for apology.

He was being married, for better, for worse, as long as he Eved, never
to part from Katie untE death parted them. But they were young, and life
was long ahead. There was no use in thinking about death now except
that it was the far end to any life.

“I pronounce you man and wife.”

He turned with Katie’s hand heavy on his arm. The rooms were bright
with autumn flowers, and October sunshine poured into the uncurtained
windows. It fell upon these patient people of Median, hard-working and
good, and not one of them beautiful. He went sEenfly and carefully down
the aisle toward the door. He was one of them now. He had married
himself into them, flesh to flesh and spirit to spirit

At the door they stood and waited. BEI White fiddled the wedding march

THE TOWNSMAN-

2-47

madly, and the people rose and came forward to pour out good wishes
and shouts and congratulations and cheers.

“Eats is ready upstairs!” Lew bellowed, and upstairs they went, Jon-
athan ^d Katie leading the way, and behind them Ruth and Maggie, and
Sue with Mary, her eyes enormous, clinging to her. That smalt creature,
growing slowly and painfully through her first year, could always be
quieted if Sue held her.

Laughter and loud good-natured talk and the chatter of children filled
the rooms and streamed out upon the silent prairie. Jonathan went here
and there seeing that aU had food, pressing sandwiches and cake upon
everyone. Ice cream was Lew’s share, and he was not content until everv
saucer had been filled twice. There was no haste for any to be gone. The
evenings were long and the hour set purposely early. And Jonathan and
Katie were going nowhere except to step into the new house next door. He
had no wish to travel with school so near its opening, and Katie was eager
for the house.

“If we went an5nvhere Fd be thinkin’ about the things waitin’ to be done
here,” she had told Jonathan.

So he loitered at his own wedding and listened, smiling, to Lew and
Henry telling stories to each other for the benefit of the newcomers.

“ ’Member that young feller walked in one day with his scalp pulled
down over his eyes?” Lew asked Henry. “Got away from Indians. Well.
Bill White took a string off his fiddle and sewed it back again and feller got
weU again, ’cept he stayed crazy. Had to ship him back East to his folks.”

“Indians was bad them days,” Henry said gravely.

Samuel Hasty, always on the outskirts of any group of men, lifted his
thin voice. “When I come here in sixty-five—”

“In sixty-three”— Henry’s roar took the words and drowned him with
them-“I was in Lawrence, and by Jiminy I slid out the night before with a
bunch of wild horses I was drivin’ east and next day Quantrill and his gang
bust on the town— left hundreds of people dead in the streets.”

Jonathan found his pupils one by one and spoke a word to them and
had his reward in Mrs. Drear’s good-by.

“Seems as if the whole of Median got married and not just you and
Katie,” she said, leaning her head to his ear.

They lingered. There were so few times for merrymaking that when one
came they held it as long as they could. There was no haste in Jonathan,
either, only stillness. He stood listening, joining in the talk and forgetting
a good deal that Katie was his wife and this their wedding day. Once, hav-
ing forgotten, he saw her stiff young figure without thinking until he hap-
pened to see upon her finger the new wedding ring he had put there. He
had chosen it from a dozen or so that Lew kept in stock for travelers west
who met and married on the way.

My wife? he thought.

It would take time.

24S'

AMEEICAN : TRIPTYCH

; Wlieii they were,, gone at .last and only he and Katie deft, they closed
. the', windows and went downstairs. Katie looked aronnd the .disordered
rooms-. ,

^“Thls’B take a lot of cleaning,” she said soberly.

*‘Dond' think of It now,” he said. ‘'There’ll he time tomorrow.” :

Tomorrowf There: was the night between. But this was only Katie. She
stood waiting for him, and he put her hand on his arm. She kept it there
inert, and he thought again of that strange lack of relation between the
quick energy of her body and her large, heavy hand. But he put his own
hand over hers loyally, and together they walked across the little space to
their house.

The sun had set with ail the colors of the autumn in the sky. The prairie
was dark and smooth, deep strokes of purple and black until gold edged
the horizon. In the new house the shades were up, and Ruth had lit every
light. She was watching for them and opened the door as they came. Mary
was in her arms and Maggie at her side. "Welcome home,” she said shyly.
She had spent much thought about this moment and feared it. It’s only
natural they’d like to be coming home alone, she had thought. If it had
been only herself, she could have gone back with Jamie. But there were the
two small ones.

If there was any wish that they were not there, neither Katie nor Jon-
athan showed it. "Thanks, Ruthie,” Jonathan said, and took Mary into his
arms as he did every evening when he came home, and Maggie clasped
his leg and laughed when he scuffled her along as he walked.

Katie came in briskly and shut the door. "It’s cold,” she said. "I
wouldn’t be surprised if there’s frost tonight”

It was like any other evening, except that they were m the new house
and everything was being done in a first-time sort of way. It was more like
a house moving than a marriage night. After supper in the new kitchen he
went to the door of the second bedroom and saw Maggie and Mary tucked
into bed, Mary in her crib that he had painted a nice blue, and Maggie on
a pallet

"I shall get a bed for Maggie soon,” he said, bending to kiss her good
night

"A big high bed,” Maggie cried.

"For you to fall out of?” Katie said. “No, a little low bed.”

“Maggie’s a big girl,” Jonathan said gently, seeing Maggie’s full lips pout.

He kept Ruth with them without knowing he was doing so, talking of
their mother and Clyde.

"We must write Dad about the new house,” he said. He kept thinking
about his mother and father and how once he had hated the night and
how he had distrusted it because night took his mother away into a world

he did not know.

Night lay ahead of him now. There was no postponing it. Ruth slipped
away from them, and he and Katie were alone. Without looking at her,

THE TOWNSMAN

249

he wound the clock, and put the ashes, over the fire. She rose, and then, he
did look at her and saw what, he had never seen before, fear cold in her
eyes. Instantly pity made him cairn.

*^You mustn’t be afraid of me, Katie,” he 'said. .‘‘Nothing is changed,
Fm,, what you’ve always known, my— my dear.”

She could not speak, and he. took her shoulders and turned her toward,
the door.

“You go in,” he said. “Fi! stay' here for a bit”

He sat down then alone and thought to himself that he wished he smoked
a pipe, though he had never felt the need of such a thing before. The
house was very c|uiet-~Ms home, of w'Mch he was now the ,head., and Katie
was his wife. And then he was terrified. There was no stir in him of passion.
Now he knew why he was in Katie’s debt and would be as long as he lived.

Jve done a fearful thing to her, he thought heavily, Fve m,a.rrled her
without loving her. A mist of tenderness rose in his heart, and pity strength-
ened him again. He rose and blew out the coal-oil lamp and went resolutely
toward the room where she waited. At least he could behave so she would
never know, and at least she need never be afraid that he would be cruel
to her because of love too strong.

She was in bed when he came in, her pale brown hair braided in two
braids as she used to w^ear it. She looked exactly as she always had, and for
a moment he felt the night impossible. But he undressed doggedly and put
out the light and climbed into the big bed that had been her parents’ wed-
ding present. They lay awake, talking in fragments of one thing and an-
other, each afraid of what they could not say.

“Jonathan, did you lock the door?”

“Yes.”

And he, “Hush— is that the wind rising?”

And she, “If it is, there won’t be frost.”

But sometime in the night, he could not have told the hour, Ms virgin
body woke to hers of its own accord and separate from himself, and so the
thing he feared was done.

Out of that involuntary union his marriage took its shape. It was a word-
less marriage. The fountain of his spirit was sealed. He marveled some-
times, remembering how in his love for Judy words had poured out of
him, unconscious, as poetry. When he had Judy in his arms he had not
been able to keep from murmuring as he caressed her. It was as though
she had unstopped all his sources and his whole soul ran fluid in her pres-
ence, like silver made molten.

But there was only silence between him and Katie except when they
spoke of his work and of their daily living. She could be voluble enough
over a weasel In the henhouse or a snake under the porch, and she could
talk endlessly, he thought sometimes when be was tired, over a rag of
gossip in the town. But when they were alone together, when in the night

250

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tiie invoiuntary UGion took its place and became spare liabitj sfac' was silent
and he. Their life together was scarcely different, he thought as time went
on, from what it had been before they were married, except that Katie
never went away from his house.

They were three years childless and then Katie conceived her first child.
She kept her silence, In the reticent w^ay of all prairie women, until she
could not keep it any longer. Then, blushing her furious spots of red upon
her cheekbones and her neck, she told him.

^^Maw says Fm in' the family way, Jonathan,”

She blurted it out one night in spring when he sat figuring his school
accounts and she sat mending. He looked up, not comprehending at first.

What— Katie, you mean—” he stammered, and then he too began to
blush. He felt the hot blood pour up from his body and drench the very
roots of his hair. “Weil,” he said, and put down Ms pencil.

The silence fell on them again. He felt as though he had been given a
blow, and familiar tenderness came creeping into his heart. It seemed pite-
ous that a woman should bear a cMld to a man who did not love her, and
at this moment his debt to Katie began to pile into a mountain before Ms
eyes.

“My dear,” he said gently, but not rising and not going to her, “Fd
rather have a child than anything on earth.”

She looked at him in her awkward shyness, and he thought he saw
tears in her eyes. She put down her mending on her lap. “I pray it’ll be
a boy,” she said in a low voice.

“Boy or girl is welcome,” Jonathan said. He could figure no more
that night, and he put the books away and sat watching her while she fin-
ished her mending, and then he saw Ms watching made her ill at ease and
so he rose and wound the clock and set the house ready for the night.

The days went on, and their silence did not break. When the first deep
snow fell in December, Katie laid herself down in her bed early one evening
and before midnight his son was born. He did not go in until Sue Parry
caiied him,

“The little child is bawn,” Sue said softly. “It’s a boy, sub.” He had not
gone in because he knew that Katie would have been shy before Mm. But
now he rose and in dignity Sue stood and waited for Mm to pass her into
the bedroom.

There in Katie’s arm he saw a small form, a round black head, and he
bent over it. For the moment he forgot her. He was so absorbed in this
new being, his, as no other being in the world could be his, he thought
with a rush of painful joy. He had Ms own at last

Then he saw Katie’s face, turned to look at him, and the heart In his
breast gave a great and separate heave. One other could have been more
his own— his child and Judy’s. Had her fiesh and his mingled, his fruit

THE TOWNSMAN

251

would have been perfected. He knew one instant of pure agony. He
waited for it to pass, then he touched his boy’s head.

^'Thank you, Katie,” he said.

He was surprised to see her little hazel eyes fill with tears. ^'^ YouTe tired,
my dear,” he said gently.

But she shook her head. “It’s not that,” she whispered.

^^‘Then what?” he urged her. Her hand lay loosely on her breast, and he
made himself take it and hold it. ‘mat, my dear?” he asked again.

But she shook her head a little. “I don’t know,” she faltered. “It’s roe
ought to thank you, Jonathan.”

When Ms daughter was born two years later, he told himself that he
would have no more children. His son he had named Jonathan, and Katie
named their daughter Lula after her own mother. But he did not tel! Katie
that he would have no more cMIdren. The silence between them was never
broken.

“Ruth, tiaere’s a tramp coming in the gate.”

Maggie, a plump, pink-faced girl of fifteen, put down the dish she was
drying and tiptoed to the window of the kitchen, her red braids bobbing
up and down her back, and peeped out from behind the curtain. “He’s
got a big black beard,” she whispered.

“Oh, dear,” Ruth cried under her breath.

There were many tramps in this year of 1881. It had not rained well for
two years, and from the western half of the state there trickled through
Median a stream of ruined men. Those with families went on; but solitary
men lingered until the town’s patience was gone.

“Median ain’t no Chicago,” Lew Merridy grumbled. “We’ve got to
scratch our livin’ ojff the country, too, rain or no rain.”

“I wish Katie wasn’t over at the store,” Ruth said. All her old timidity
of the plains trembled in her. She thought of the two children upstairs
whom Katie had left to her care while she went to help in the store,
had had a stroke last year, and Katie spent many of her afternoons there

“Anyways, I wish she’d taken little Jonnie and Lula,” she said.

“He’s coming right to the door,” Maggie cried.

Ruth’s ready fear mastered her. “Run over to the schoolhouse by
front door and tell Jonathan to come right over,” she whispered. “Fll
the door quiet4ike.”

She gave Maggie a push and slipped to the door and noiselessly turned
the key. Then she stood with her back to the door. If the tramp
in at the window he could not see her, and the kitchen would be
She stood there, and between her shoulder blades she

Part

Three

254

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

the wooden door of a powerful ■hand. Thus she was standing, dishcloth in
hand, when Jonathan hurried in.

'^Whatever— he began.

'If s a .tramp, a big one!” she whispered. '

'Well, he can’t, eat you,” Jonathan said shortly. ‘'Move away from the
door, there’s a good giri.”

He could never be impatient 'with Ruth’s terrors because they had their
beginnings in the years she had shared too young with their mother. Ruth’s
fears were his mother’s fears, and sometimes it seemed tO' him he could
see his mother over again in this girl’s too-gentle face. But Ruth had not
the final power of desperation that had made Mary strong. 'When no help
came, Ruth was helpless against her own fears. Why else did she hesitate
so long over marrying good young Matthew Cobb! She was afraid of mar-
riage because she had seen marriage too close in that dugout on the western
plains. It was one of his problems, and he thought of it every time he saw
her, because it had somehow to be settled. Matthew was continually at him.

He pulled at the door. ‘'Why, whatever— ”

'T locked It,” she said breathlessly.

He turned the key. "Really, Ruthie, if s very inconvenient for me. My
history class is sitting there—” He threw the door open in spite of himself
with impatience. There was no need to be afraid of these men wandering
into Median and out again. If it would ever rain they would go back to
being good farmers. "Good day,” he said in a firm voice.

A burly bearded man stood there in dust-colored garments, his feet
wrapped in rags and a bundle under his arm.

"Hello, Jonathan,” he said. "You haven’t forgot your dad, I reckon.”

Jonathan stared at him. Clyde had grown heavier, hairier, browner. But
his lips were as red as ever in his dark beard. "No, I haven’t forgot,”
Jonathan said, "though I didn’t think to see you like this.”

But he had thought of it, as he had seen the stragglers tramping through
Median. His father and Jamie, to whom he never wrote any more because
they never answered bis letters, he had asked himself, where were they
in these evil times?

"Come in,” he said. “Where’s Jamie?”

"He’s with an outfit as catches wild horses and breaks ’em in and sends
’em East,” Clyde said, shuffling into the kitchen. "Ifs ail right for a young
chap, but Fm beyond it, though hearty enough for anything, nearly. Hey,
thafll never be you, Ruth!”

He stared at Ruth and then clapped her on the shoulder blades. "Give
us a kiss, girl! Eh, you’re like somebody I miss sore to this day!”

He put his face close to hers, and Ruth felt the wetness of his full lips
in the bristling cushion of his beard and shrank back. But Clyde did not
notice it.

"Make me a bit of dinner, there’s a good girl. Fm famished.” He sat

THE. TOWNSMAN ■

down and put his bundle ■ under the chair and began unwrapping Ms' feet,
*'1 lost the last bit of leather from my soles a while back/' lie said. ■

/‘Couldn't you get a ride?" Jonathan asked. He was still standing. What
would, he do with this man? The house was 'too full a.!ready. If the times
had been,, better he would have added a room to the house for Ms two
children, but, the times were bad' and no sign of better unless rain ca.me.
Sommer had passed and it was rnidautumn, and still no rain came.

, “Folk don't give rides for nothin V* Clyde said. His feet,' were bare, and
he sat up and looked about the kitchen. On the table Ruth was putting
a cup. and a plate, fork and . spoon,, bread and butter , and sugar. He got
up and went over tout and picked up the loaf and pulled, at its' end.

' Instantly ail the memory of his childhood rushed over Jonathan. Tlie
kitchen at Dentwater the day he came back to find Clyde set on America,
pulling the end from, an English loaf—here he was, a beggar still!

“you're very fine here, Jonathan,” Clyde said. “A little bit of all right
this is, rd say.” He stared around the room. “A coal cooking stove, too—
and a pump in the kitchen-eh, Mary’d like that. Whaf s the water, spring
or deep well?”

“A well,” Jonathan said shortly. ,He hesitated. Could he leave Ruth
now or not? “My history class is waiting, Dad,” he said, looking at Ruth.
She nodded slightly, but he was not sure. “I’ll send Maggie for Katie, and
she’ll be back in a jiffy, while you’re eating your food.”

“Where’s Maggie?” Clyde demanded. “I’d like to see the little tyke.”

“She’s not little any more,” Jonathan said, “and likely she’s gone back
to afternoon session now.”

Clyde sat down at the table. “You go on to your job,” he said, loud
and cheerful before food. “I’ll clean myself a bit after Fve et, and be
more civilized-like when your missus comes in.”

“Very well,” Jonathan said. “Make yourself at home,” he added.

“I s’ali,” Clyde retorted. “You don’t have to tell me that. Coffee, Ruth.
Tea seems wishy-washy stuff to me now.”

He was not changed, Jonathan thought grimly. He went out and then
looked at his watch. It was too late to go back to Ms class. The hour was
over. He would go for Katie himself. She would be what she always called
“put out,” but that must be got over with Katie when anything new hap-
pened, and once over, she knew what she wanted to do.

He walked quickly the six blocks to his father-in-iaw’s store. They were
proper blocks now. The old rotten boardwalk was gone, thanks to his own
insistence two winters ago, and the square was bordered with a hard-sur-
faced stuff a fellow named McAdam had invented. It made good streets
except for being sticky sometimes under the summer sun. But he always
suspected they had not mixed it just right, though he himself had read the
directions out loud while the Hasty boys put the stuff together. Abram
Hasty took up the road-building business after that and went everywhere
in the state. But it was a good thing he had forced the road through Median

256

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

before this drought set in. He glanced at the cottonwoods in the square as
he did every time he passed them. Big as they now were, they would not
last' much longer. He had tried tO' persuade people living about them to
throw their wastC' water' to save them, but they wanted it all for the parched
vegetable gardens at their kitchen doors.

If they die, I shall plant elms and maples and black walnuts, he thought.
Theyhe permaoeot

He had reached the store now. It was not changed since the irst time
he saw it, even by a coat of paint. Inside Mr. Cobb was measuring striped
calico for a solitary woman customer whom Jonathan did not know. That
was bow big Median was, he thought, so big there were now people here
whom he did not know.

**Where*s Katie?” he asked.

Mr. Cobb moved the tobacco cud in his cheek and wiped his chin with
the end of his cotton tie. ‘Tnside,” he said. don^t feel so good to-

day,”

He went on and, opening the door, saw Lew, now enormously fat, lying
stretched on the couch, an old crocheted afghan across his stomach.
Mrs. Merridy sat rocking sadly at his side, her thin hands clutched across
her waist,

'‘Well,” Jonathan said to them both. “Sorry you’re not so well, Lew.”

“My beiiy don’t give me no rest.” There was a rumble under the afghan.
“Hear that? It’s goin’ again—ciamorin’ for food. And if I put anything like
a square meal down, it sets up such a to-do I’m all wore out. I et canned
corn for dinner, and this hyere’s my result.”

“You used to could eat canned com like a hawg,” Mrs, Merridy said
sorrowfully.

“Well, I am sorry,” Jonathan said. “Where’s Katie?”

“In the kitchen, bilin’ up some pep’mint,” Lew said faintly. “She thinks
it’ll help.”

He went into tlie kitchen and found Katie scrubbing furiously at dish
towels while she waited for water to boil. She looked up as Jonathan
came in,

“I declare Maw’s eyesight is gettin’ so poor she can’t see whether a thing
is clean or not,” she said.

It never occurred to her to come out of her world into his. He had
always to wait until she had spoken herself out before he began.

“I’m sorry you have to do that much extra,” he said gently.

“Well, I do,” Katie retorted, “and there’ll be more. The store’s goin* to
ruin. That Cobb’s no good except to hand out something over the counter
when it’s ast for. I declare, if he was all that Matthew was made outen,
Fd say Ruth’d be sensible to say no.”

He stood a minute, dreading to put anything more upon her.

“Anything wrong at home?” she asked. The tone of her voice made the
question a dart.

THE TOWNSMAN

257

“Well, yes, I suppose you*d call it that My fatbefs come, ■ Katie.”

‘^Your father!” she echoed. She paused, her hands in the scanty suds.
“Why, what for?”

“He' looks badly off,” Jonathan said- apologetically.

mean he’s come to stay?” ■ ■

“I don’t know-of course he can’t live with us, Katie, but-”

“As if there wasn’t enough,” she cried. She fell to fresh scrubbing..
Flecks of soapsuds flew out and spattered his coat, a.nd he wiped them o£
“Is he sick?” she demanded.

“No, no, he looks fine,” he said quickly. “He hardly looks any older,
even. It’s surprising..” '

She did not speak while she rinsed the cloths, emptied the dishpan, and
piled them into it “I’ll hang ’em out and be right along.”

“I’ll help you,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” she retorted. “I don’t want people sayin’ you’ve got to'
help me hang out my folks’ clothes. You go on— I’ll ketch up.”

Long ago he had learned to yield to her on this pride of hers concerning
him. She was bitterly independent. His position as principal of the school
she made into a fetish, and only second to it was her determination to do
her own work without help except what Ruth and Maggie could give her.
“The men,” as she called Jonathan and little Jonnie, were not to do worn-
en’s work.

“All right, but let me carry the pan for you.” He took it, and they went
out of the kitchen door into the back yard, and then she seized it. He
hesitated, as he so often did when he was with her, feeling incompleteness
between them. “I’m sorry about my dad,” he said.

“It can’t be helped,” she said. It was all she would say, it was what she
always said, and he let it pass as he always did and went homeward. It
had taken him a long time to realize that the phrase was neither bitter nor
unkind, but merely a sign that Katie, after being “put out,” was ready to
make the best of a situation. He walked quickly through the dry Oc-
tober sunshine, deciding whether he could go back to his work or had better
see how his father did. Then it occurred to him that the children might
awake and be frightened, as he himself had used to be frightened when
he was a little boy and his father rubbed his hairy face into his neck.

“I won’t have that,” he said sternly, thinking of his little son. He hastened
into his house and then heard Clyde’s laughter roaring out of the kitchen
and went in. Lula was on his knees and Jonathan standing a little off,
sucking his thumb!

“And then I says to the old bear, ‘It’s me as s’all have the honey, my lord,
not you.’ An’ so in I dashes with my stick, an’ the bear sees my beard, and
thinks, ‘Ah, that’s a bigger bear nor I be, and mebbe I better go home.’
An’ that’s how I had honey on my buckwheats next day’s breakfast.”

At the sink Ruth, washing Clyde’s dishes, was smiling. No one saw Jon-
athan, and he tiptoed away. Never in his life could he remember sitting

258

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH.

oa.jiis fatliefs kaee. But he remembered that ■ in, his, way Clyde , had been
.fond 'of and Jamie, and. that he had fondled Maggie roiighly when he

felt . like play. Maybe he’s changed, be thought
, '.He e,iitered the schoolhouse, wondermg' for the first time, in his life If Ms
mother had made him unjust. Marriage belonged to .women, and men had
not .much part in it, perhaps. He sighed an.d straightened Ms shou,!ders and.,
sitting down at his desk, he took up the pa.per he had put down when he
left .for Ms .class. It was .the copy of a bill .new,iy passed by the state legisla-
..ture making the selling of' liquor illegal, in the state of Kansas,; and it was
signed by Evan Bayne, the speaker of the legislature. He never saw that
aam,e without the old stir- within Ms breast, and he saw it often now. AM
these years, he had. not been face to face with Evan, though they wrote
when there was some matter to write about— he when Median had paid off
the debt on the schoolhouse, Evan to congratulate him, and he again to urge
Evan for his help in putting the branch railroad through. Median south-
west, and Evan to tell him it was done, and he again to ask Evan’s ad-
vice about the new post-office building, and Evan to tell him what forms
to send for and sign and what more to do; and now the post office stood on
the other side of the schoolhouse, a small handsome one-story building of
brick. And then last year Evan wrote to Mm begging Mm to fight tMs very
proMbition bill he held in his hands now, and he had written to say he
would not, though he hated as much as any man to put in government’s
hands the right to say whether a man could drink or not.

But there were six saloons m Median now, and the hotel was little better
than a saloon, and he had his boys in high school to think of, the sons of
farmem who came in to Median In wintertime to go to school. If they had
been in their own homes, he would not have cared, but they lived where
they could to come to Ms school, and he could not forget that woman who
strode into his office last year and Hung words at him like fire because in
Median her son had learned to drink. He had taken it coldly until at last
her anger was put out by her own tears, and she sobbed, ^‘Whafs the
good of leainin’ out of books if he’s to be a drunkard? And everybody talks
so good about you I thought you’d be lookin’ after him!”

He had looked after his boys ever since, and he had fought for this
bill against Drear, stumping the county to do it ail through the summer.

"I believe in man’s independence, but I speak for those who are not yet
able to be men,” Ms speeches always ; began. When he and Henry met,
he maintained his good humor against' Henry’s violence.

**Your own nose Is too red, Henry,” he said gently, ”but that’s all right
with me. It’s your nose.. What I’m tal.kmg against -Is young Will Healey, ■
tumbling out of your door at sixteen. He’s one of my senior pupils.”

we’re goln’ to run Median for babies,” Henry bellowed, move
out. Why, I can’t make money on a hotel without a bar, and you know it,
you blasted son of an Englishman! Yes, an* I wish your own father could
see you. He liked bis liquor as well as anybody.”

THE TOWNSMAN

259

' : ^So; do I—so do I,” Jonatliais said impatieotly, tel me hom to keep
my boys out of your bar!^^

The eod of it was victory, made a little less sweet than it might have beefi
for Jonathan, because Katie was so heartly for , it He was ashamed of him-
self, but it was true that he could fight more zealously for a thing If
Katie were not on Ms side. She could not remain friendly with an enemy,
as' he could,, nor would she forget. It embarrassed him that still she would
not speak to the Drears. He found in himself a perversity .he wished to
ignore when her very interest pressed her to question him. ■

'*‘Whafd you tell Drear when he said that?”

merely said that boys of sixteen were not babies' exactly, and that
they were important to the future of the town.”

*Tf it had been me, Fd have told him a thing or two. He runs a gamblin'
place In that hotel of his.”

*‘Oh, I don't think so, Katie.”

^‘Everybody says sol” This was her eternal retort, and he could not bear
it.

‘‘Everybody says so many things.”

“Well, I know you never believe what I say, but there’s our own children
to think of.”

“I tMnk of al chldren,” he said patiently. “Long ago I fought against
Median being a cattle town because of children. I don’t want the saloons
here now.” But he had felt goaded by her stiff figure, all its angles sharp-
ened as she sat under the lamplight, one of Ms socks spread over her left
hand, her right weaving the long needle in and out “I don’t want saloons,
and yet I don’t tMnk it’s right either that the state should tell a man he
can’t drink in a free country. It’s a thing that has to be thought out, and I’m
only doing this as a step toward that final tMnking. Saloons have got to get
out of Median, and I can’t think of any other way to get that done for the
time being except by prohibition. But maybe the next thing I’ll work on is
how a full-grown man can get a drink if he wants it.”

She looked at him, her eyes round with indignation. “Shame on you,
then!” ' ■ ■

“All right, if you say so,” he retorted and grinned at himself. It was
his eternal retort, and he wondered if she knew it was. But such things
they could not talk about, for she was humorless.

Then his irrepressible pity made him remorseful. She was so good a
keeper of his home, scrupulously just to Ms sisters and carefully as kind to
them as to her own children. And never had she let him know she felt a
lack in him. His faults she might fiare against, but then she made amends
which he could scarcely endure because that way remorse compelled
something beyond the power of Ms affection, and beyond he could not go.

But it was a marriage. It had become a marriage. Love was a single
bond, but marriage could be a web woven of a thousand threads, none

260

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

strong enoogli alonCj but' together as strong in time, as love coold be. .He
had: come to believe that

, His ey.es fell on Evan’s name again,. Evan’s marriage had held by that
single golden bond. At any rate, held-he had never heard a whisper of it,
good or bad, and here in Median people had forgotten how Evan had
found ■ his wife. In his letters Evan always said, “Judy joins me in good
wishes to you and yours.” But that was all “Judy joins me— ” Evan saw
Judy every day. As often as he saw Katie, Evan saw Judy.

“Pshaw!” he said, aloud and folded the bill abruptly and thrust it into a
.drawer. .

“What shall you do next, Father?” Jonathan put this question openly
one day in early spring. Clyde had spent the winter with them, penniless
and making no move to earn anything. He slept at night on a pallet
in the sitting room and lounged in the kitchen all day if it stormed.
Through it all Katie had not once been impatient with him. Clyde liked
her tolerantly, never forgetting for a moment that she was plain. Privately
he wondered how Jonathan slept with her. Tis no wonder I have such
a few grandchildren, he thought wickedly. Damn it, I admire Jonathan’s
stren’th of mind. He longed for someone he could say this to and laugh,
but there was nobody in Median who would laugh at Jonathan. He felt a
little ironical about his son. Now Jonathan was fixing to build a church.

“I never knew you was religious,” he said.

“Fm not much,” Jonathan said honestly. “But a church is a good
thing in a town.”

“Eh, I reckon,” Clyde said, “I haven’t been in a church since I heard
old Clemony in Dentwater. Last preacher I see was a humped little chap
out our way as called himself a rainmaker. Give him a try, I did, but
there wasn’t no rain. Guess he hadn’t the trick. Folks say some do make
rain, though, with sulphur or somethin’, but he only had his prayers.”

“A humped little fellow married Katie and me,” Jonathan said. “After
he was gone I took texts off the trees like apples.”

“Same chap, likely,” Clyde said. “He was always mailin’ up . somewheres
as how you had to be bom again.”

He went on talking and talking. He sat in a warm room and talked
all winter long.

“Fm waitin’ for somethin’ to open up,” he said.

He waited through the summer, through winter again, until the verge

THE TOWNSMAN

261

of, another spring. Then rains fell and ail that had been waiting in the ..soil
sprang early into life, an.d suddenly one day he was ready to,, be go.n.e..

‘"Guess .FI! be goin’,”, he said, “if' you can spare me fifty do.iIars,
Jonathao.^V

“I suppose I can,” Jonathan said, not looking at Katie. He drew it out
of Ms small savings and gave it to Ms father, and with this in the suit of
clothes Jonathan had given him, he took the train westward. ""If 11 be kind
of good to see my own land again,” he told them. ""Well, good-by all.”

Clyde had trimmed his beard and parted it in the middle and pulled
his hat over his- dark eyes and let a red scarf Ruth had given him' for
Christmas fly at Ms throat . He waved to them gaily from the platform.
He looked, ten years younger than when he came— a young man still, Jon-
athan thought with disgust.

That night the house seemed full of room without Ms father’s restless
p.resence.

""A miracle you’ve been to that man, Katie,” Jonathan said that night.
""Don’t tbink I haven’t seen it all these months or that I haven’t wondered
at your goodness.” He was somewhat dashed by her reply.

‘"Oh, I don’t know, there’s sometMng about him I kind of like!”

But a strange good thing came out of Clyde’s stay. Some terror went out
of Ruth forever. She had been afraid of her father in memory for years
because of the quarrels he had made in those nights upon the prairie, when
she lay listening, because she could not help it, on the pallet beyond the
blanket that curtained her parents’ bed.

""Give over, do!” she could hear her mother’s sharp whisper.

""Eh, whafs the matter now? It’s a headick or bellyache or somethin’
every night— a sore toe, maybe, or a finger boil now.”

""Be quiet, Clyde! You’ll wake the children.”

.""Let ’em wake!”

""Clyde, for shame, whaf 11 Ruth think?”

""She’ll know, soon enough!”

But Clyde alone she gi*ew used to through these months and no longer
feared. He teased her and grumbled at her, and she came to mind neither.

"‘Eh, your hair’s pretty, too, like hers was!”

“But Mother’s hair was fair, Father, and mine’s dark.”

“Don’t tell me what her hair was, for I know. I’ve wrapped them yellow
braids of hers around my neck on a cold night like a muffler. When we
was married she could sit in her hair like a cloak, and if I’d knew she
was goin’ to die with a child of mine I’d ha’ let myself burn up before one
of you was bom, but a man don’t think of it at the time.”

She did not insist on what she knew, that her mother’s hair had been as
fair as Jonathan’s, and soft and straight like his* Instead she laughed at
him, and he made constant fun of her shyness with Matthew. When on
Sunday afternoon Matthew came to see her, Clyde would open the door
himself.

262

AMERICAN TEIPTYCH

■ ^Come k,. lad! She’s beeE waitin’ for you afl day. Couldn’t eat no dinner,
our Ruthle couldn’t, and she’s got on her best dress.”

By now 'Ruth .could not be found. Then he would shout at Matthew,
*‘Sit down , and wait, Fli find her!” He stormed through the tiny house,
searching under beds and through closets, and from somewhere pulled
Ruth out, half-crying and half-laughing, and pushed her, by the shoulders
and then shot her into the sitting room.

“There she is, lad!” he roared and banged the door upon them.

“You’re terrible,” Katie had said. But she had laughed, too.

And Jonathan, who could never have done the thing himself, knew
nevertheless that it was what these two shy creatures needed. Behind that
closed door Ruth would be blushing and wiping away tears and trying to
laugh, and Matthew would have his chance.

He was not surprised when, the Sunday night after Clyde’s going, Mat-
thew came out of the sitting room to where he and Katie sat in the kitchen,
his shoulders very straight.

“Mr. Goodliffe, sir, if you are willing, Ruth says she will have me.”

Jonathan looked up from his paper and let his eyes twinkle. “Fve been
willing ail along, Matthew,” he said. And then he rose and went into the
sitting room to find Ruth alone, twisting a curl of her hair around her
finger. .

“Well, Ruth!” He kissed her crimson cheek. It was hot under his cool
lips. “Fm glad you’ve come to this. It’s the right thing.”

“Do you really think so, Jonathan?” she whispered.

“Sure of it,” he said. “Matt’s a fine gentle chap, and he’ll be good to
you, and you to him.”

To Katie that night he said, “If my old Dad did this, I’ll forgive him
part of the nuisance he’s been to you in the house— and to me always. A
queer thing it took him to do it, though.”

He put out his hand for hers in a gesture he did not often make. She
quivered a little whenever he did it.

“There’s something in him that makes folks easy-like,” she said, and
longed to tell Jonathan that she loved him. But between them those words
had never passed.

Clyde trudged over the land, newly green, his big bundle on his back.
The Santa Fe railroad came within twenty miles of his claim, and he got
off at Garden City, a string of one-story houses along a wide unpaved
street. He left it behind in a few minutes and tramped to the southwest.
He was full of sleep and good food and restlessness and impatience. All
of the old strength was in his blood again.

Everywhere over the land the firm, strong spears of buffalo grass were
pushing up through last year’s sod. The long drought was over. The earth
was damp beneath his feet It would have been mud had not the sod held
it firm under its ancient roots. The sky was blue, but there were great

THE TOWNSMAN

263

white. cIoEds ro.llmg a.way to the Rocky Mountams. He had ne^er seen
the mouBtains, but they were there all the same. Some day he’d go to
them., . maybe. If farmers came cutting up the' sod and 'planting, their
diddling crops, he’d. go on West

He yawned at the midday sun after he had eaten the bread and salt
meat he had .bought in Garden City, and then he lay down and slept for
an hour- The warmth,, the smell of the young grass., and the wet,e.art,h.
stirred him awake. He did not open .his eyes at once. His blood "rose un-'
comfortably.

. Oh, I s’all have to get married again, maybe, he thought When" Mary
died he swore marriage was a curse to man. But later it had come to . him
that not , all . women were like Mary. There were wome,n who cared for
men and not for whether they had babies or not. If a man had one of
them in his bed every night, things would be dUfferent. He climbed slowly
to his feet, unable to bear the physical weight of his desire.

“There’s no good teasing myself with thinkin’,” he muttered. He
shouldered his bundle again and went the eight miles left. But the sun beat
upon him warmly, and the stillness could not take his mind oflf his need.
He grew peevish with himself.

Dang me if I couldn’t have stayed in the town and come home to-
morrow if Fd thought of this, he thought angrily. He had gone months in
Jonathan’s home with no violent need. Everything there had made him
think of Mary, and since she had died he had thought of her as an angei
and desire for her was gone. Or maybe, he thought, it was the books
in Jonathan’s home. He never liked books about. They cooled him down
and made him feel ignorant But here there was nothing, only him be-
tween earth and sky.

He plodded along angrily, aware of his body’s need, and so came to his
own sod house. It looked like a lump of earth in the midst of the green
prairie, but it was still standing in spite of two winters and rain. He hastened
to it, and to his indignation he saw the door was open.

“What son of a bitch has settled hisself here while I’ve been gone?”
he yelled. He threw down his bundle and tore off his coat and made for the
door.

Someone was standing at the stove where Mary used to stand. It was a
woman with a crop of red hair down her back. She turned as he charged

in.

“Hello, Clyde,” she said.

He dropped his flailing arms, and bis breath caught in his lungs.

“Jennet! It’s never you!”

“Why not?” she said. A spoon was in her hand, and she licked it with
the end of her red tongue.. There was a great bruise over her left eye. “Fve
been here ofl and on all winter. Hope you don’t mind.”

She was not nearly as beautiful as once she had been. Her face was pallid
and her hair burned dry and carroty. Her green eyes were stiU jewel-Iike,

264

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

but tie lids were tired. She' put the spoon back . Into the stew she was^
'Cooking and began to braid her hair. She laughed a single hoarse note.

'Fd of known you was comk’ Fd of cleaned myself up— maybe.” :

He was so dazed with the opportuneness of her presence that his head
whirled. '**1 dotft know aiiyt.hing as Fd rather have come home to than
you, Jeniiet.”

; **¥011 can make it permanent, if you want.” She turned her back on
him while he took this in.

"The' Englishman’d split my head,” he said.

“Reckon not.” Her back was- to him still. “Fve left Mm.”

“For good?”-

She gave her short laugh. “For marriage,” she said. “Is it the same?”

His throat was thick. “ ’Twould be with me, Jennet.”

“All right,” she said indifferently. “But nothing don’t begin before.”

But in the night she yielded to him suddenly, and he cried ■ out with
happiness.

“ ’Twill he fun to marry one like you,” he panted.

Before the young minister Jonathan stood with Ruth clinging to his arm
as she made her marriage promises. The wedding had waited through the
spring until June before a minister stopped in Median. He was a young
missionary on his way westward to the Indians.

But the long wait had determined Jonathan that the church must be next
in Median. Upon the map he and Evan had once made together he had
drawn a firm pencil line through schoolhouse and post office. These were
done. He had the choice now between courthouse and church next. If
the big county were to be divided, as there was clamor for, Median might
be the new county seat. Courthouse, maybe, then should come first. Mean-
while they could go on having church in these two schoolrooms where he
and Katie had been married, too.

But he liked this Paul Graham. There was none of Joel’s fanaticism in
his quiet gray eyes. He looked rugged and good. And since Jonathan never
thought of anything near Judy without tMnking of her, he wondered, as he
often had before, in some sad secret abstraction, whether Joel had put
into Judy some of the shifting sand of his being.

Katie was gray rock, and Judy silver sand. He still saw Judy more clearly
bright than he saw anyone. Katie’s face, which he saw every day, was a
blur when he thought of Judy’s face, which he never saw and doubtless
would never see again. He dragged himself out of the slough of memory
back to this moment of another marriage.

Just now the young minister’s face was flushed. This was his first wed-
ding, he had told Jonathan, and he stammered over the words until Ruth
was suddenly set at ease. He minds as much as Matthew and me do, she
thought

Matthew, she now knew,. was even more shy than she. The discovery

THE TOWNSMAN

265

tiad given her a sedate pleasure, and she blamed herself at heart, for what
she called to herself her dilly-dally. Now, as Pan! Graham, pronounced the
ina! words, she slipped her left hand from Jonathan’s arm and her right
Into Matthew’s and squeezed it gently. He had bought Ms farm, though
it was heavy with mortgage, and had built a two-room bouse upon it, and
they would go there tonight. Sue had put white organdie curtains In the
windows for a wedding present ■

The Parry family kept almost out of sight until something needed to' he
done, and then they were there. That was because Jonathan kept sending
their letters for them to Beaumont in France. Jona.than'dld tMngs for every-
body. People came to him about their children from all over the county,
■and in Median nothing was done without' him. He had been better to Ruth
than anybody and had made his home hers. She thought she ought to take
Mary with her anyway, but he was not willing.

“^You’li have your own children,” he said in his dry quiet voice.

Martha Cobb played the wedding march on the school organ, and she
stepped down the aisle. She felt the beat of her old shyness creep up out
of her bosom as she faced the people. There were so many people in
Median when they all came together.

*T shall miss you, Ruth, my dear,” Jonathan had said, but he did not.
Whatever Ruth had been, she had by her very presence kept Maggie a
child. Now, without presage, or so it seemed to Jonathan, Maggie from
being a fat little girl rose up from her bed one morning a plump young
woman whose solid fiesh had properly distributed itself into rounded hips
and breasts and full wMte arms. By night, or so it seemed to him, as he
looked back, every male under twenty-five in the county had known it.

For the first time there was quarreling between the women in his home,
Katie scolding Maggie as she scolded all of them, but Maggie would have
no more of it Jonathan was distracted with the discord because he be-
lieved it of no importance when women quarreled, and more because he
had made up his mind that Median must be the new county seat This
decision he had come to because he wanted order In the new county, and
because Median shopkeepers, headed by Lew and Henry, the old-timers,
wanted business.

‘^And don’t you look to gettin’ the county by any of your peaceable
means, Jonathan,” Henry Drear said sternly. ^‘Women ain’t gonna be no
use here. I’m sendin’ East for two dozen rifles on my own hook. We’ll
need ’em sure. I know that there town of Ashbee.”

‘T’ll get the money for the courthouse if you’ll get the election for
Median,” Jonathan said.

To Paul Graham he put the matter plainly. **Here’s Median wanting a
church and a courthouse. Our souls need the church and our pockets the
courthouse. Give us time and we’ll have both, but sermons’ll go down

266

AMEKICAN TRIPTYCH

bettei-.Tf our pockets are Mier, especially after the drought But I ' want
you to stay here and hold down our souls till we’re the county seat.”

: ...“But I. volunteered for the Indians,” Paul s.aid. He.. .saw in. Jonathan a
..'slender, shabby inan who' was neither young nor old, because he had never
been young and would never be old. Jonathan was energy .made human,
a dogged power of a man who had Median by the nose.

“I never took much stock in Indians,” he now said. “It was a good
sensible thing to get them herded together so. they can be taken care of.
Every human' deserves to live once he’s bom. But so^ long as there’s the
souls of folk like we’ve got in Median, it’s folly to bother about Indians.
Why, these people here are what the country’s made of!”

“God sent me to the heathen,” Paul said.

“Indians aren’t solid heathen,” Jonathan retorted. “They’re whafs left
of something that’s gone. Save ’em, of course, if there’s enough salvation
to go around, but why shouldn’t salvation come first to us? You can preach
in the schooihouse, and when we get the courthouse, I’ll put my mind
next to the church.”

“Median’s a city whose maker and builder is you, not God,” Paul said,
his smile faint.

“When I ask you, Fm asking God to help,” Jonathan retorted.

In the midst of all this to go home and find Katie and Maggie in quarrel
was sore on his patience. He lay at Katie’s side at night listening to her
story of the day.

“I want we should get Maggie married as soon as we can. She’s not like
Ruth. She’s like your old goat of a father, and her mind’s full of nothing
but men, though she ain’t seventeen yet. And the way she answers me
back—I slapped her face today, Jonathan, she’ll tell you I did, and I want
you should know how it was. Let her say what she wants, it was like this.

I told her to clean up her bedroom. She don’t do a thing she don’t have
to. Well, she didn’t, and I did it myself, and there was a letter laying on
the bureau, open. I didn’t read it, but I saw the first page. She’s going out
at night from her window down to the drugstore, after she says she’s in
bed.”

“She can’t come to much danger in the drugstore,” Jonathan said mildly.
The new drugstore was kept by a Methodist from Iowa.

“But if s night!” Katie cried.

“Oh, ail right, my dear,” Jonathan said, sighing. There was magic In
the night for some, maybe, “I’ll speak to Maggie.”

He spoke to her the next day, calling her into his schoolroom office,
as he would any pupil who needed It.

“Sit down, Maggie,” he said. He looked at her as he would at another
girl and saw her young body bursting out of its faded gingham dress.
“Seems to me you need a new dress, child,” he said.

Her impetuous face brightened at every point, the blue eyes bluer, the

THE TOWNSMAN

full ips parting, her red hair seeming to crinkle. She had tialr strangely
alive to tlie rest of her being.

''Can I, Jonathan? I need ’em something terrible. I haven’t gained weight,
but Tve just-groww.^'" She gestured toward, her breast, and he saw a bright
scarlet lying up her neck. ,

, "You mustn’t wear that one any more, anyway,” he said.

"You’ve come to a place, Maggie, my dear, when you must be careful
how you show yourself— that is, if you want to catch the right sort of .man.
And it’s no good pretending you don’t, for what every woman is set upon,
in her heart Is how to find the man she’ll many, and every man .is thinking
about her whom he will— love. Don’t behave so he' can’t see you when
he looks at you because you’ve made yourself like somebody 0186.”

Maggie’s full young breasts began to heave, and her bright blue eyes
were full of warm quick tears. She had not prepared herself for gentleness
after what she well knew had been her impudence to Katie. But how
could she explain the brimmin.g of her being these days? Her veins were
too Ml; she could not keep her voice low or. her laughter soft. And she
was alternately excited and frightened by the changes in her body which
she wanted to hide and yet at other times to flaunt without knowing why.

"Katie’li think it a lot of trouble to fix me new dresses, though,” she
said.

"Katie has a lot to do,” Jonathan said sternly. "She cleaned your room
for you yesterday when you should have done it. There’s no reason why
she should make your dresses any more. Go to the store and pick out your
cloth for two dresses and tell Lew I’ll pay for it. Then after school take
the stufi over to Pai‘ry’s and tell Sue I sent you to be taught how to make
them. Now go along and don’t let Katie clean your room again.”

"All right, Jonathan.” She hesitated a moment as to whether she would
not go over to him and kiss him. She longed to pour out her strong affec-
tions whenever she could. But she had never kissed her brother or seen
Mm kiss anyone. He was familiar to her as no one in the world was so
that she gave Mm not a thought, taking his presence and Ms absence
equally for granted. Now, with the intensity with which she saw every-
thing these days, she saw him, a quiet reserved man, whose hair and skin
were sunburned and wind-bitten to the color of sand. Only his eyes were
vivid. She longed to speak to him, to say sometMng to show him how
different she was now from the fat troublesome child she had always been.
But she did not know how to begin, and then he glanced up at her from
under Ms sandy brows and said in his decisive schoolmaster’s voice, "That’ll
do now, Maggie.”

"Everybody obeys my brother Jonathan,” Maggie said proudly. She was
having a chattering good time with Sue, who said little and listened well.
The excitement of the green-and-red checked gingham skirt pinned to her
knee flew to her tongue. But there was more than the new dresses. Yester-

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

day when she went into the store a strange thing happened. She had a
letter. Never in her life had she received a letter,' and now she could not
believe. .it. '

'*Come yesterday/’ Lew had said. He was ■ well. thought Fd give it
to Katie or somethin’, but they don’t keer a crumb about me onless Fm
about to die. Got to have my of bellyache to get my family together these
days.” ..

“Fil take my letter,” Maggie said and put it in her pocket She could
scarcely choose her goods for thinking of it, and when she had the stuff
measured and folded under her arm, she walked away from the town to-
ward the prairie, her hand in her pocket on the letter. When she was well
away she sat down beside the dusty road and took out the letter. A big
loose handwriting sprawled her name across it. She tore it open and read
it slowly. It was from someone she had never heard of, a George Tenney,

Dear Maggie:

You will be surprised to get a word from me as you will hardly
rember me but ask your brother Jonathan does he rember
George Tenney used to giv you brekfeast on the ship. Well Mag-
gie now you are grown up nearly. I had it hard at first but
struck good luck a year gone and am in clover. So thought of
little Maggie I used to know. Is your hair still red I wiO come to
see for myself one of these days soon.

Yours resp’f iiy,

George Tenney

But she had had no chance to be alone with Jonathan. He was in one
of his ‘‘jobs,” as he called it. This one was to make Median a county seat.
When he came home at night he told Katie what was happening, and they
talked long after she had gone to bed. She lay with her letter under her
pillow. She had once got up in the night, sleepless with moonlight and,
putting on her clothes, crawled out of the window and gone to Hale’s
drugstore. It had seemed exciting, though no one was there except Mr.
Hale himself, surprised to see her. While he mixed her a strawberry soda
he said, “Does your brother know you’re out, Maggie?”

She had lied and said something about studying late. When three men
came in and banged their fists down for root beer, he had kept his eyes
on her and at last he said, “You git along, now, Maggie, It’s late.”

But she did not need to crawl out of the window any more now. The
letter under her pillow was enough.

Sue was ironing the sleeves of the dress with a potlike iron full of hot
coals.

“I don’t know about eve’body,” Sue said. “I know I obey Mm on ac-
count of I can’t. pay back what. he did. for. Beaumont ^

“Who’s Beaumont?”

“Beaumont’s my son,”

THE TOWNSMAN

269

Sue set tlie iron on the stove and went to a bnrean and opened the, top
drawer and brought out a package wrapped in white paper. She took fro,fii.
it a photograph of a young and foreign-looking man in a frock coat, with
a narrow moustache curled upward. His hands, even in the picture strong
and supple, clasped hat, white gloves, and a. thin walking' stick. In the,,
buttonhole of the coat was a white fiower,

^'TMs is Beaumont,” she said, “He’s in Paris, France.”

‘'What’s he doing there?” Maggie took the photograph into her thiinbled
hand and stared at it. The young man scarcely looked black at all ■

“He’s, goin’ to be a brain surgeon. Not goin’ to do anything else ' but
just brains.”

“He don’t look like any of you,” Maggie said, still staring,

“He ain’t,” Sue said. She put the photograph back into its papers, into
the drawer, and went back to her iron. She wet her fingers and touched
it and when it hissed she began ironing.

“Is he coming back here?” Maggie asked.

“I don’t want he should ever come back,” Sue said quietly.

“Then will you go over there?”

“I reckon I cain’t.”

“But you’ll never see him again!” Maggie’s blunt voice put boldly into
being what Sue knew but had never spoken.

“I reckon not,” she said.

Maggie sat silent for a few minutes. How would anybody behave to a
man who looked like that when you knew he was only one of the Parrys?
The Parry children had finished the grades in school, but then they had
gone to work. Melissa hired out, and Pete helped his father, and next year
Gem would stop school.

“I guess I better go home,” Maggie said. Her letter crackled in her
bosom as she stooped to pick up threads from Sue’s rag rug. She knew
every word of it, but she longed to read it again. “Til be back tomorrow
right after school,” she said joyously. If he was coming any day, she must
have a dress made and ready.

Jonathan, the school closed for summer, turned heartily to the next
work for Median, An idle day was beyond his endurance. His life was
good enough when he came home at night after a day’s work. But the
small house was a cage when he did not get away from it. Katie’s voice,
not unpleasant in itself, carried a peculiar vibrating penetration that

270

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

pierced wall and door so that every room was full of her; presence. With-
out knowing, he was compelled to escape it.

From the empty schooihouse he drew together the, web of affairs in
Median. Young Graham had gone to his Indians for a year of trial. That
had been his compromise with Jonathan.

''Suits me just as well,” Jonathan had said. 'Tt gives me a year to get
this county-seat business out of the way.”

ActuaEy he was resolved to do it in this summer. He , set tasks for him-
self of heroic size and lashed himself to finish them.

Today, the third of July, the men he knew best were coming in to plan
tile campaign-Lew and Henry and the three Hasty men, Samuel and
his two sons, Bill White and his eldest son Frank, and he had asked Mat-
thew to come in if he could leave. They came one by one, these men
whose faces were better known to him than his own—the old-timers, he
thought, pushing chairs forward for them. They were solemnly silent be-
fore the idea of a meeting, talking with quieted voices of crops.

"Folks say there’s grasshoppers to the west—”

"I ’member the hoppers in seventy-four, et up the fence posts even,
and out in the cornfields the noise was like cattle chewin’. And I picked
up a fork, I ’member, out in the barn, and they’d chawed the handle too
rough to hold. But still the next year Kansas apples got a gold medal in
Philadelphy.”

"I was back near Salina then. Poor man’s diggin’s, it was.”

They were waiting for Jonathan. He sat at his desk before his papers.
He shot up his sandy brows at them.

"Well, folks, we better begin. First question maybe is where’s the county
line to be drawn. Shall it go thirty miles west of Median and take in
Hyman, or do we let Ashbee have that?”

Matthew came in, but nobody spoke while they considered the map
Jonathan held up.

"If we let Hyman go, Median’ll be plumb in the center of the new
county,” Jonathan said.

Matthew coughed, but nobody paid him any heed. "I don’t know as it
means anything,” he said mildly, "but my farm’s just the other side of
Hyman. Yestiddy I was ridin’ after a colt that broke loose, and about five
miles off I found him in a sinkhole— leg broke. But there was water in the
hole, and the water was slimed with oil. Leastways it looked like oil.”
His voice sank into silence. The room was Ml of silence. A cicada out-
side the window sawed its two notes suddenly and ended in a long wheeze
before anyone spoke.

"Anyone else know?” Jonathan asked.

"Not a soul,” Matthew said.

Oil! The men looked at each other, their faces carefully skeptical

"Couldn’t have been planted, could it?” Henry Drear’s voice was husky.

"I don’t see how,” Matthew said. "Besides, nobody’s ever said a word.

THE townsman-

271

The man that owns the , land himself don’t know whafs in that sinkhoie.”

'Wasn’t he there to help yon get the colt, out?” Samuel -Hasty asked.
His meager little mouth worked.

"No, he wasn’t at home yestiddy, his wife said. 1 borried some rope
from her and got down in and roped the critter and crawled out agam and
hauled him out. ’Tain’t but a young colt.”

"Reckon we better draw the line west of Hyman,” Lew said.

"The question is how far west?” Jonathan said. "Does the oil run east
or west? We might cut the best part off, whatever we do.”

"Put it ten miles west,” Henry said.

"Put it twenty-five,” Lew rejoined.

Jonathan was studying the map. "The river runs thirty miles west and
south. Likely it’s the boundary. Let’s say thirty miles.”

He glanced about a circle of nodding heads, and slowly he drew a firm
pencil line. Then he put down the pencil and lifted his head.

"The next subject for discussion is the manner in which votes shall be
collected as between Ashbee and Median.”

Henry Drear grunted. "Jonathan, you let me tend to the vote-gettin’.
Folks take their votes serious. It’s a life-and-death business. You set the
day, and I’ll git me a gang and round ’em up.”

Jonathan frowned impatiently, "I don’t want Median votes got like that.
Nobody’ll be satisfied, and there’s no luck to a thing when nothing but
anger comes of it. Median’s a decent place, and it’s more important to
have it so than to get the county seat.”

Henry’s chair came down on the fioor. "If the world was half saints and
half sinners, I would agree to that, Jonathan. But it ain’t. It’s full of sin,
and I ain’t pertendia’ Fm not one of the sinners. I ain’t converted. I never
was baptized. I go to gospel meetin’s, but I don’t convert. I come out like
I went in. You let me handle this-hyere votin’.”

"What’s the vote here?” Jonathan’s quiet voice was steely with stub-
bornness. :

Men looked at each other.

"Fm all for peace if you can git away with it,” Lew said. "But Fd say
keep the guns handy.”

"My idea, too,” Samuel agreed.

Jonathan waited. No one else spoke. After a moment he went on, "The
next question is the date of the election, Ashbee wants it a month from
today.”

He waited again. The men were full of their own thoughts.

"Let ’em have what they want there, since they ain’t gonna git nothin’
more,” Henry said. He rose as he spoke and pushed back his chair and
spat into the spittoon near by, "I guess I gotta be goin’,” he said.

"No, you don’t,” Lew said, his voice firm and his words slow, "Well
start fair,”

272

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Every maa la tlie rooms except Joaatliaa aod MatthcWj rose aod moved
toward the door. But Lew's great body filled it first.

*'We’ll ail line up outside the schoolhouses'' he said. He drew a pistol
from Ms pocket. “When I fire we’ll start. It won’t pay anybody to start
first”'

He heaved himself down the steps, the pistol hanging from bis hands,
and waited until the half-dozen men were in a line. He fired it, running
as he did so, and down the main street of Median they ran, every man for
his horse.

Jonathan and Matthew sat in their chairs. They had not moved. Jonathan
a.iTanged the. papers upon his desk into their usual straight piles.

“Any reason to think there is oil on your land?” he asked.

“i don’t know yet,” Matthew replied. “There’s no reason against it. The
sinkhole ain’t but about half a mile from my line post.”

“Oil’s a tricky thing,” Jonathan said musingly.

He tried to imagine Matthew and Ruth rich with the sudden fabulous
wealth of those who found the treasure of oil in their earth. What would
these two simple people do with money? If he had money he would build
Median a church and a hospital and himself a roomful of books and add
a study to his house where he could be alone sometimes in the evening.

“Shan’t you buy a piece of land around there, Jonathan?” Matthew
asked.

“I haven’t time to bother about getting rich,” Jonathan said. He smiled
faintly. “Reckon it’ll be easier for me to get the money I want from other
folks when they get rich.”

But he couldn’t ask anyone else for a roomful of books for himself.
“Haven’t even much time to read,” he thought.

He stirred in his swivel chair. “Well, reckon we better get back to work,
Matt”

“Ruth and me haven’t had much luck yet,” Matthew said. He stood up,
a tali stooped young man with an Adam’s apple so large that he looked
like a crane. “One of the cows tried to jump the fence last week and tore
her belly open. We killed her quick and made beef, but she w^as a good
cow and just come fresh. It’s too hot to keep meat now, and I couldn’t
get rid of much of it. Ruth’s tried to salt it down, and I brang some to
Katie today.”

“That’s bad about the cow, though thanks for the meat,” Jonathan said.

“Fve done some carpenterin’ for Stephen Parry on a house, though,”
Matthew went on. His toneless voice was part of him.

“WeE, it takes energy,” Jonathan said briskly. “I don’t believe much
in luck.”

“I don’t know about that,” Matthew replied with doubt “ ’Twasn’t any
energy put that oil in the sinkhole. Twon’t be energy thafli put oil in my
land.”

Jonathan laughed. “You’ve got me there. Well, then, good luck, Matt!”

THE TOWNSMAN

273

“Thanks, Jonathan., Matthew drawled and, gathering up his long legs,
he went away.

Six men crawled down the slimy black sides of the sinkhole. Lew®s face
was purple veined with black. He had not ridden horseback in a year,
and his heart was beating as though it would burst out of his breast. But
he lowered himself down, into the hole.

“Aitft no doubt about the way it looks,’’ Henry said. He dipped his hand
into the iridescent black water and smelled it The water was foul and
stagnant,' but stronger than the foulness was the penetrating reek .of oil

They smelled it, one after the other, and then they examined the sides
of the hole. The earth was damp but not with water.

“It’s like putty, it’s so full of oil,” Samuel Hasty said.

Two men clambered out quickly and mounted their horses.

“Hey, there!” Henry yelled.

They clawed the slimy banks and pulled themselves up by the strongly
rooted grass, each man thinking only of himself. Not one saw that Lew
was left behind.

“Hi, Henry!” he shouted. There was no answer. He heard the clatter of
horses over the hard sod. “Sami!” he shrieked. He scrabbled at the slip-
pery earth, but his vast body it was impossible to lift. He made one last
great straining effort and felt a strong hot fiery flash inside his skull.
Thought and knowledge were wiped away in an instant, and he fell back-
ward into the oily, rainbow-surfaced water.

“You’d ought to tell Hans you found that oil in ins sinkhole,’’ Ruth said
when they were eating their dinner of beef stew and cabbage.

Matthew’s mouth was full of dry salt-rising bread, and he took a gulp
of milk to down it before he could speak. “Never thought of it,” he
exclaimed.

“We’d surely appreciate it if somebody’d tell us if ’twas ours,” Ruth
said with wistfulness. Dreams unfinished and suppressed were in her dark
eyes and in the faint color on her brown cheeks.

If they found oil she would add a parlor to the house, and they would
buy a buggy and a team of horses instead of the mules, and she would
buy an organ and a big doll for little Mary and for Maggie new clothes
and Katie a fur muff and for Jonathan a gold watch. She loved to give
presents, but never in her life had she walked into the store and bought
anything. By some overlooking, no one had ever given her money and let
her buy with it. Her mother and then Jonathan and Katie had bought and
given to her, and now Matthew went to the store on Saturdays. Even if
she went with him, he did the buying. She never had money in her hand
to exchange for what she wanted, I could have it if I’d only say so, she
thought in her defending heart. But she could never say so, dreading to
explain, to be thought silly.

274

■ AMEMCAH TRIPTYCH

“III go right away before I start the afternoon’s work,” Matthew said.

An hour later he and Hans found Lew’s great bulk head and shoulders
under the rich water.

Hans, a kind and melancholy German, groaned, 'Td do midoudt oil
forever before it happens on my place.”

The two men could only heave the head out of the water.

'Til have to get Jonathan,” Matthew gasped. “Can you stay here, Hans?”

“Sure,” Hans said. He took the end of Lew’s shirt 'and wiped the oil
from his face.

Matthew climbed out and upon his mule galloped to Median and went
to the empty schoolhouse. Jonathan was back at his desk.

“Lew’s drowned,” Matthew shouted,' “He’s in the sinkhole. Itll take a lot
of us to get him out.”

Jonathan leaped out of his chair. “They didn’t go and leave him!”

“Must of.”

“I wish you’d never found the danged stuif, Matthew. It makes men
act like beasts.”

“Whatli I do, Jonathan?”

“Round ’em up. Get the hotel surrey and take the back seats out and
lay a quilt down to put Lew on. I’ll have to tell Katie. Then 111 join you.
But don’t wait for me. Get the others. My mare’s fast. I may catch you
anyway.”

He strode out of the schoolhouse Into the clear July afternoon. How
would he tell Katie, and how comfort her? He longed to have love to aid
him so that he could open his arms and make amends. But to begin a course
so strange to them would only make misery for them both. He sighed and,
entering the door, smelled cinnamon and the fragrance of baking cookies.
He went toward the kitchen. She was there at the table, cutting the dough
quickly into stars and hearts. Through the open window he could see the
children playing together in the back yard under a tree. She looked up,
astonished to see him, and he began to speak quickly before she could ask
the reason.

“Katie, there’s bad news, my dear.”

Her mouth opened, and her round eyes grew rounder.

“Wait,” he said. “Do you want to take the cookies out of the oven Orst?”

“I better,” she said. “They’re done, anyway.”

He stood while she emptied the pan of brown hot cookies upon a clean
towel. The watchful children ran to the window.

“Mom! You said we could 'have' some! ”■ This ' was Mary, who 'xalled'
her Mom as her own children did.

She picked up six and gave them two apiece. “Don’t ast me for any
more,” she said. Then she turned back to Jonathan.

“Your father’s— passed away, Katie.”

She sank upon a chair. “Oh, Jonathan!”

“In a queer terrible way, Katie—”

THE TOWNSMAN

275

He had not told her that Matthew had found oil. The fewer people
who knew it the better, he had thought. But the real reason was that he
did not want her to urge him to buy land. He was a schoolteacher, he had
been thinking wryly when Matthew came in, a speculator in human beings,
not in human wealth.

‘*Shame on those men,” Katie cried. “That Henry Drear, too, that Pop
always stood by!” She choked and lifted her gray calico apron to her
mouth and held it there. Over it her eyes filled with tears.

He made a step toward her, feeling he must make some response to
her sorrow for Lew’s sake, too.

“I was fond of him,” he said in a low voice. He patted her shoulder
gently once or twice. “I’m going to miss him myself, Katie, a great deal
Fve got to hurry, Katie.”

She fumbled for the slit pocket in her skirt and found her handkerchief
and blew her nose loudly.

“Fll have to teU Maw,” she said heavily.

He tiptoed away, his heart thick with sorrow and pity which he could
not express, because between them there was no path of communication.
He could only use the common ways in which he would have helped her
had she* never been his wife. And yet he longed to come nearer to her in
her need. He knew her, if not with the niumination of love, nevertheless
with the sober knowledge of the days and nights they had lived together
under the same roof. But that life had been bounded by what could be
said and heard and done. All that lay beyond th^e boundaries they had
not shared. He thought sometimes that oMy in himself was there the be-
yond, and that her complete life was in what she did and said as she kept
the house and in the afternoons went around two sides of the square to the
store. But there was no time now to think. He hastened away.

Two hours later he helped to lift the lifeless mass of Lew’s dead body
off the surrey and carry it through the store into the back room and lay
it upon the couch. Sue was waiting, for it had become her service in Median
to prepare the dead for burial. Mrs. Merridy was there, and with her the
twins. ■ , ' ■

“Get Joe and Jack out of here,” Jonathan said to Katie sternly over
his shoulder.

But she had shaken her head. “Maw wants ’em to be here,” she whis-
pered back. She held her handkerchief to her mouth as they laid Lew
down. Mrs. Merridy sobbed loudly, but the twins did not move.

But Sue had heard this command, “Go out from here, afi of you,” she
ordered them, but her full soft voice made the words gentle. “I must do
what I can before he gets his mortal rigors too set.”

They tiptoed out as though Lew’s deaf ears could hear. Katie held her
mother’s arm, but Jonathan put a hand on each boy’s tliin shoulders, as
tali now as his own. They were pupils in his school and Katie’s brothers,
but he had never given them much heed. They were, he bad always thought,

, 276 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

commoaplace boys, exactly alike, from dusty brown hair to bare feet. But
aow he saw them acutely as Lew’s sons, robbed forever of Lew’s hearty,
happy 'presence.

^‘Come along over to our house,” he said. “lonnie and Lola and Mary 11
be glad to have you.” He turned to their mother. “Will you come, too;
Mrs.'MerrIdy?” He had never been able to call her mother.

“No, I want to stay here with Lew,” she moaned. “Sue’!! be here~I
don’t want nobody else.”

So they had left her, and after supper the children played out under the
trees in the^ square. Katie went out to speak to them sharply two or three
times because they grew too noisy.

^ Why not let them be happy?” Jonathan said.

“ ’Tain’t decent, with a death in the family,” she said indignantly. She
was so exactly as she always was that he wondered how much she felt, or
could feel.

In the night he thought he heard her crying. Something waked Mm, and
it was Katie, sobbing. He moved from his side of the big double bed where
he lay by long habit in a narrow stillness as he slept, and put out his hand.
It touched her hair.

“Are you awake, my dear?” he asked.

“I been thinkin’,” she replied. Her voice was firm. Perhaps she had not
been crying, after all. He waited for her to go on.

“Jonathan, there’s something I want you should do.”

“I will if I can, Katie,” he said gently.

In her fierce independence she had asked of him very little. He thought
sometimes that it would have been easier for him if she had seemed to
need him more than she did. A clinging, gentle woman might have wak-
ened in him a deeper tenderness. But he was not a whit prepared for the
stupendous act she now asked of him. Her voice came out of the darkness
at his side.

“I want you should take the store.”

His ears heard, but his mind refused belief. “I couldn’t manage school
and store both, Katie.”

“You could give up the school.”

“No, I couldn’t!” His cry was sharp in the night.

“Why not?” she asked, “I wish you would, Jonathan. I’ve often wished
you would. Even if Pa hadn’t died, I’ve wished you would. It makes me
mad the way you have to listen to the trustees and the way you’re at
everybody’s beck and call, and you got to take what they feel to pay you.
Last year they cut you a third, and you couldn’t say anything. You haven’t
any independence-you belong to the town. But in the store you’d have
nobody to be your boss,”

“I couldn’t,” he gasped. He forgot that it had ever been his thought to
comfort her. She needed no comfort. It was he who would need strength

And yet each time when the day came it was good. Jonatliaii was a
man bom to enjoy small cheerful things. Good food, sunshine, the slant
of the plains toward the sky that his eyes never failed to see, the welcoming
solitude of his office chair, the papers on Ms desk, a book he bought sc-^

THE TOWNSMAN

' 277 '

to withstand her. He could hear in her voice the strong stubbornness that
meant one of her ideas had' taken her narrow mind in its hold.

do hope you won’t push me, Katie,” he said, trying to be stem. **For
I won’t be pushed in this.' A man must do ' what he likes best to do, and
schoolteacMng is what I’ve always' wanted. Why, even in Dentwater I
used to, plan a school. I never thought I’d have it here in Median, but now'
that I have, my life is here.”

'^*Then you don’t care if a bunch of men says they can’t pay you 'what
you earn,” she cried angrily.

I don’t,”' he said, “not when I know it’s a bad year , and ' nobody’s
gotten what he earned.”

“Well, it’s me has to feed you all just the same,” she retorted. “If you
was in the store you’d get easy twice as much. Pa said last year was his best,
year. He laid by more’n he spent.”

“I don’t want more money, Katie,” he said gently. “I can pay my blls.
If I can’t, Median folk’ll tmst me. Why, I don’t even want to buy up land
for oil. I just want to live the way we are. I’d rather put in my extra time
the way I did to get the post office. If we win the election for county seat,
I’m going to get us a courthouse this summer. I made it a promise to
Drear that he could say Median would put up its own courthouse if it was
chosen.”

“You’re ready enough to work without pay, but somebody pays!” Her
voice was bitter. “I pay and the children pay!”

“But you have what you need, Katie!” he cried. “What would you do
with more money?”

He asked it honestly. She did not read, she played no instrument of
music, clothes could not change her or give her vanity.

“I’d like money in the bank,” she said. “If anything happened to you-”

He interrupted her. “Nothing’s going to happen to me. I shall live a
very long time.”

In the darkness of midnight he felt infinitely weary. In the darkness he
and Katie must lie, side by side. It was a very long time until the day could
break. They did not speak again.

278

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

cretly to add to Ms' shelves, a. schoolbook sent him, sometimes, and this
always iattered him though he knew it was sent to hundreds like him,. the
sight of Ms son Jon running .out of the house ,to' meet him at night~the
days were lively with- such cheer.

Lew’s funeral was hardly over before Katie went at him again.

*^Whafsto be done about the store, Jonatha,E?” ■

“It can be sold,” he said firmly.

“WeH, it won’t be,” she said. Katie’s chin, of no particular shape, ■ could
look like a cliff under her plain mouth.

He did not answer. In his own quiet way, without being aware of it, he
could be, as high-handed as Clyde.

When after weeks he saw Katie would never sell' the store and was
tr^dng with her mother to manage it herself, he said mildly, “Fll keep the
books for you, Katie, and make the inventory and orders.”

“Thafll be a help,” she said.

But she did not give up, and he knew she had not. Between her and her
mother he felt a snare set for him, and he walked warily; and yet, though
he did not know it, he had Mrs. Merridy to thank for what peace he had,

“Don’t you nag Jonathan,” Mrs. Merridy told Katie. “He’s the kind
that comes quicker without. Now Lew you could nag, for he’d do anything
to git rid of you. But Jonathan goes his own way.”

“It’ll come around my way one of these days just the same,” Katie said.
“I shan’t rest until he’s in the store.”

Outside of his house Jonathan gave no thought to the submerged strife
between him and Katie.

The dark rainbow promise of oil was being fulfilled. Fourteen great
demcks had sprung up around the sinkhole in which Lew had drowned.
American House was jammed with beds for men who had come out of
every place in the country where rumor had chanced to be blown. Even
in the days when wagons were going West there had not been so many
travelers. These were all men. If a woman came, she was an oddity and
she knew it. But the bulk of the oil land was not for sale. The Sunflower
Oil Company had bought it No one knew who were the men who made it
Hans Bourse said, “Somebody comes to me after Lew is todt in my sink-
hole— a nize man knows Lew good, he sayed. ‘Aln’dt it awful how Lew
dies,® he sayed, and he was Lew’s friend. So I. sayed, ‘Yes, is awful, for
sure.’ An’ he sayed, do I want to sefi the sinkhole and maybe ten-twenty
acres around. He sayed maybe is there oil,' there and if iss, I will get twenty--
five per cent. So I sayed, ‘Ya, I don’t vant a sinkhole nohow a man drowns
In and maybe next my good cows.® And so I put my name on Ms paper.”

The same man came one day to Matthew’s door at noon. Matthew and
Ruth were at dinner. They were eating their first green com, and Matthew
had a great ear of it in h^ hand when he opened the kitchen door,

“Good day,” the man said. His dark eyes were soft with a smile, “May
I have a word with you?” ■

. THE TOWNSMAN 279 '

^^Come in/’ Matthew said. ^'We’re eatin.’, and you’re welcome to jiae.iii.
That’s my wife. Cobb is the name/’

“How do you do, Mrs. Cobb,” the man said. “Tm glad I can speak
with both of you. A man’s m^ife is a useful partner. I’d like to have an
option on your land for oil, Mr. Cobb. I’ll pay higher than the usual terms—
say, fifteen dollars a year, and if we strike oil, a fourth of the proceeds are
yours. Does that seem fair?”

, Ruth looked at Matthew. Others had offered them fi.ve dollars a year,
and, eight and ten.

“I— it is more than we’ve been offered,” Matthew said, hesitating. “Won’t
you sit down, stranger?”

“Thanks, no,” the man said.' “I must be on my way. Then you will
take it?” ■

Matthew looked at Ruth. “Can’t do no harm to take the highest bid,
can it?”

“I guess not,” she said faintly.

“Ail right,” Matthew said.

“Then will you sign this paper?” The man held a folded paper toward
him. ‘‘Read it first, please. I wouldn’t want you to sign what you hadn’t
read.”

Long legal words heaped themselves before Matthew’s eyes, “I guess
it’s all right,” he said. “I don’t make much sense out of ’em, but I ain’t
puttin’ out any money, am I?”

“Of course not,” the stranger said quickly. “It’s the other way. As soon
as you sign that, I put out the money.”

He took his purse from his pocket and counted fifteen dollars.

“And here’s a pen,” he said, “one of those newfangled ones that holds
its own ink.”

Matthew shifted his corn to his left hand and wiped his fingers on the
seat of his jeans.

“Works, does it?”

“It’s inclined to be balky.” The man laughed a rolling gust of laughter.

Matthew signed his name and took the money and the man folded the
paper quickly and put it in his pocket. Then he tipped his hat to Ruth and
smiled his pleasant smile.

“Good day,” he said and was gone. They saw him leap on a chestnut
horse and gadlop away across the plains toward the east.

Matthew looked dazed. “Did somep’n happen to me or didn’t it?”

Ruth laughed. “The money’s in your hand, silly! What was the name
on the paper?”

“Damned if I know,” Matthew said ruefuHy. “I ought to of looked,
oughtn’t I?”

“Oh, well,” Ruth said easily, “it doesn’t matter. We have the money.
Oh, Matthew, suppose they should find oil on our land!”

“Whafll we do with the money?”

280

AMERICAN ' TRIPTYCH

“MattlieWs could I have a piano,?” she whispered.

^^Shore you can!” He stooped to kiss her and then sat down.

' "‘If s silly when I can’t play,” she said.

“You can learn, can’t you?” he retorted. “Well have to move if they find
oil. Might buy us a house in Topeka. You could get a music teacher there.”

“Whafll you do in Topeka?” she asked anxiously.

“Might go into making furniture,” he said slowly. “I always did hanker
after woodwork. Something I could smooth to the grain.”

They sat in silence a moment, the fifteen dollars he had in Ms shirt pocket
the kernel of all their hope.

“Seems like we ought to share all this ‘with somebody,” Ruth murmured,
looking out of the window.

“Jonathan ought to buy, but be won’t,” Matthew said. “He don’t want
to bother with gettin’ rich.”

“Then lefs tell Jamie!” Ruth’s brown eyes lifted.

“Good idea,” Matthew said largely. “You know where he’s at?”

“He’s still at the Big Four Ranch, his last letter said.”

“Then shore,” Matthew said. “I guess we can afford a stamp now, cain’t
we, Ruthie?”,

“I reckon!” she said and laughed. “Oh, Matt, ain’t we lucky?”

“Wonderful,” he said.

At the Big Four Ranch, lying on the grass at noon hour, Jamie folded
Ruth’s letter and put It into his shirt pocket and stretched himself. Who
would have thought of oil in Median? He was taller than either of his
brothers, taller now than Clyde, and blue-eyed and black-haired. Hard
riding against sun and wind had made his skin coppery as an Indian’s.
His hairy young hands were as strong as steel traps.

“Quickest way in the world to get rich,” he muttered.

He had a contract with Big Four to stay until winter, but he made up
his mind now that he would break it. No contract had ever held him be-
yond his wish when all he had to do was to jump on a horse and lope
across the prairies. He had the finest horse that he had ever had, chosen
out of the wild horses that he had lassoed by his uncanny skill with the
rope. The horse did not belong to him, but that did not trouble him. He
took care to keep it in the height of condition. If I have me a good horse,
he often thought, ifs my freedom.

A man came to the door and yelled at him. “Hey there, you! Ifs a
long way from quittin’ time!”

Jamie grinned, rose, and, pulling his wide felt hat over one eye, saun-
tered toward the door.

“You round up them horses you finished off yestiddy,” the foreman or-
dered him. He was swallowing the last gulps of a tin cup full of black coffee.
“They’re due to be shipped by the four o’clock. Got a rush order today
from Indiana.”

THE TOWNSMAN

2Sl

. Jamie .did 'Hot answer. He changed the direction, of .his s.amiter fro.iii
east to southeast to stop at the buiikhouse..It was empty. AH the men had
gone back to work. He went to his bunk and opened the end of the straw
tick under the blankets and drew out a small wad rolled in oilcloth. In it'
were his summer’s wages and ail he, owned except for an extra shirt under
his pillow. This he drew out and stuffed inside the one he wore. Then he
went out again. , .

If Fm goin’, 111 git started, he thought. He quickened his easy loping
gait and came to a small fenced-in lot full of horses pushing and nudging
each other.

''*^Come here, Lady!” he' called. He had a fine voice, Clyde’s voice, hot
rich and young.

A bay mare thrust her head against him, and he led her out by the
long black hair of her mane.

‘'Stand there till I fetch the saddle,” he ordered her. vScarceiy a trace of
England remained upon his tongue.

He came back almost instantly to the obedient mare and fiung across
her back a saddle so handsome that half a year’s pay had gone for It.
The mare quivered, but he buckled the girth without paying any heed and
tested the stirrups. Then he leaped on her back. The instant she felt his
weight she sprang forward and across the sod.

Within sight of the ranch house, he headed seemingly for the corral
But before he reached it he turned sharp east. Then, leaning low, he gave
the horse her head. If he kept her to her speed, he could reach the home-
stead by sundown. His heart lifted as the wind sang in his ears. This was
what he loved best in his life, a horse flying beneath him and he headed
for a new life. . . .

He did not think of his mother from one day’s end to another, but for
one moment his heart jumped when he stooped to enter his father’s door.
There was a woman sitting by the stove, her chin on her hand as Mary
used often to sit in the last days of her life. He saw a thick braid of red hair
swing over her shoulder as she turned her head to him, and instantly he
knew her.

“Hello, Jennet,” he said.

“Hello, you,” she said without moving. “Where’d you come from?”

“I better ask you that,” he retorted. He came in. “I belong here in a
manner of speaking, but what about you?”

She laughed suddenly and held out her left hand. A wide shining gold
ring was on the third finger.

“Meet your step-maw,” she said.

“You’re lying!” he said slowly. Anger and admiration mingled in him
for a moment, an anger vaguely for his mother’s sake that Jennet, whom
she always disliked, should be here, and rueful admiration of a man as old
as his father who was able so to persuade a young woman. Then he
laughed.

•11

282 AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

*^WIiy, Dad^s a reglar old geezer!” he cried. He sat down on the end
of the table withoiit taking off his hat. ‘‘How’d yon come to leave His
Highness?”.

. got tired of being chucked out when he thought he didn’t want me,”
she said. . Her mouth, which had been beautiful in sullenness when she was
a girt, was now coarse. “I decided Fd show Mm,. Fm a respectable mar-
ried woman, now.”

"Does he come around?” Jamie asked, staring at her.

"Your paw, "took his shotgun to Mm the only time he did,” Jennet said.
They looked at each other and broke into common laughter.

"Dad’s an old goat,” Jamie said and spat on the earthen floor. "Nothing
downs him.”

"He’s talkin’ about runnin’ for land when they open up the new terri-
tory,” Jennet said with a fresh burst. Her laughter was unchanged, the
same hard, clear laughter that even in her childhood had caiTied no music
in it., '■ '

"Why, he can’t run with that game leg!” Jamie cried, "And he’s never
learned to sit his horse right”

"He’s rigged himself up a seat on the back wheels of an old wagon,”
Jennet said. "And he’s trainin’ one of the colts into a race horse.”

Across the grassy landscape they saw Clyde limping briskly toward them.
Jamie leaped from the table and went to meet Mm.

“Hi!” he shouted.

Clyde squeezed his favorite son in his arms. "Where’d you blow from?”
he inquired. Under his tom hat of Indian straw his hair flew in curly gray
strands, but his eyes were as sharp and black as ever, and a red handker-
chief was knotted about Ms throat. He looked younger than he had in
years, and full of impudence.

"I’m goin’ East,” Jamie said. He pulled Ruth’s letter from his pocket
and held it out to Clyde.

Clyde spat in the grass. "You tell me what’s in it. I don’t read much any
more. Haven’t the time.”

Jamie put the letter back in Ms pocket. "Oil’s been struck.”

"Never on their land!” Clyde cried.

"Next door,” Jamie said. "And they’re lettin’ ’em try on their land.”

"Dang me if I won’t go that way instead of the Territory.” Clyde limped
faster to match Ms son’s long even gait. "Beats all how opportunity fair
crushes a man here. Oil spouts out on one side of him, and there’s free
land on the other. Fm all in a maze.”

"How’s things here?”

"Good so far as they go, hut I haven’t enough land. Three hundred and
twenty acres don’t go far. A.^ man’s^ got to think big here in this country.”

"But how’ll you manage land there and here?”

Clyde shot a look at his son. "Thought maybe you’d give your old dad a
hand. You was always the one I count on, Jamie.”

THE TOWNSMAN

283

.Fm goin’ in for.oil, Dad/’-

Clyde scratched his fingers into his beard. “Eh, well, Fil manage,” he
said stubbornly.

, Without knowing it he had decided for land and against oi because
Jamie would^ not help him. “I can do for myself,” he' said with such com-
placency that Jamie looked down , at him and then followed the beam of
his father’s eyes. They fell on Jennet standing in the doorway, ' the sun
shining on her red head as she shaded her eyes to look for them.

Jamie’s white teeth shone. ,“I should say you can,” he said. “A reglar
billy goat, ain’t you, Dad?”

“Well, Fm hearty,” Clyde said, and his red lips were smug in his beard.

In his of&ce Jonathan sat with three other men counting ballots steadily,
stacking them into packages and slipping rubber bands about them. The
box on the floor to the left of him was Ashbee; on the right was Median.
Outside the midsummer sun of an August afternoon beat upon a crowd of
men and horses and wagons. The horses were stirring against the flies,
and men fanned themselves with branches they had picked from the trees
in the square.

Jonathan stopped counting and leaned out of the window. “Don’t you
chaps break those young hardwoods!” he shouted. “Cottonwoods don’t
matter, but I sent East for the others to plant around the courthouse,” He
pulled his head in as they guffawed and went on counting.

Henry Drear waited patiently, a rifle across his knees. “Ashbee’s goin* to
declare the election’s illegal if we wm,” he said.

“They can’t do that,” Jonathan said, his lips still murmuring numbers.

“Ashbee can do anything,” Henry retorted. “But Fve got ’em fixed.”

Jonathan paused. “Median isn’t going to do anything illegal, now,
Henry.”

“You git along with the countin’,” Henry said.

Jonathan went on counting.

“Say,” Henry said, “some of the folks want to change the name of
the town when we git to be the coimty seat. Median sounds kind of
common.”

Jonathan stopped again. “How can I count if you keep on with your
dangety ideas? I won’t have the town called out of its name. Median it
was when I came, and Median it’ll he when I go. a good sensible name
that don’t pretend to be big.”

284

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“They want to cal it Mecca,” Henry said doubtfully.

“Mecca!” Jonathan repeated. “Why, that’s the name of a city In heathen-
domi”' ■■

“They say it’s a place everybody wants to go like to heaven.”

“Who wants everybody coming to our town?” Jonathan’s voice was
quemloiis. “Fve a good notion to stop this whole business right here.”

“Now, Jonathan, don’t get cantankerous. I swear for a man your size—”
He sighed. and spat

“Don’t let me hear any more silly talk about Mecca, then.”

Jonathan’s look was so gloomy that Henry took alarm. “Don’t it look
' good for .Median?” .

“Too many handwTitings alike on some of the ballots.”

“So- long as they all say Median—”

Jonathan banged the table with his fist. “Banged if I’ll be party to a
fraud,”' Jonathan cried. “Looks to me like your handwriting, Henry. See
here.” His square dexterous hands sorted a dozen or more ballots of the
same large Irregular writing. AH of them- were for Median.

The men roared with laughter. Henry was not abashed. “Don’t look alike
to me,” he said. ■

Jonathan swept them together and threw them into the wastebasket.
Henry chewed the straggling brown ends of his long moustache.

“Look hyere, you can’t—”

“Then well declare the whole election fraudulent.”

“Oh, al right,” Henry grumbled. He had risen, but now he sat down
heaviy and took off Ms felt hat and wiped Ms forehead. “But if Median
don’t git it. I’ll turn the hotel into a whorehouse to spite your damn pig-
headedness, Jonathan.”

“Median’s getting it,” Jonathan retorted.

“Even without my votes?” Henry shouted.

“Even without your many votes,” Jonathan said.

But Henry did not notice irony. He leaped to his feet and rushed to the
window and fired into the sky.

“It’s Median!” he yelled. “Median’s got it. Median— Median— Median
—hooray!” and throwing his gun on the floor he jumped out of the win-
dow and ran round the schoolhouse while the crowd yelled.

But at his desk Jonathan picked up a letter. It was very short:

' '..Dear Jonathan.:

I shall be glad to see you for any cause. Shall we say on
Saturday the eighteenth? Judy joins me in regards. I am yours
as ever,

Evan

At the end of the letter Evan had scribbled in his own handwriting,
“Come to my house, Jonathan.”

THE- TOWNSMAN

285

Upstairs in her Mg, bedroom, Jody hid behind the rose ' satin : curtain,
and looked out the window. The house was the same into which Evan had
first brought her, but a new wing added to each side had made it Into
what the, Topeka newspapers called “a mansion.” Judy herself bad' taken
on stateliness. Her hair was brushed high and lay in curls over the top of
her head. But above the lace collar of her dress her creamy nape was still
as soft as a child’s. Her hands clasping the curtains were strangely childish,
too, in their shape, and her lips had kept their purity, and her eyes were
as dark as ever above the wine-red taffeta of her wide-sleeved dress. ^

“Bo you mind' if Jonathan comes here?” Evan had asked her last,
night,

“Why should I mind?” she had replied, lifting her lashes at him.

He was no longer disturbed by this sight of long lashes sweeping upward
like the wings of dark butterflies. He knew the movement was meaning-
less because she used it to delay the necessity for thought before speech.

“No reason whatever, my dear,” he retorted. “All the agony is over,
and it seems a little ridiculous now.”

Judy did not answer. But had someone been there who loved her, he
might have seen timidity in the look she gave her husband. She was afraid
of him because she loved him and because he did not love her. Where it
was in their life together that Evan had ceased to love her she did not know.
Much of the time when she sat alone in the strange stillness which was
now her life, she pondered this matter, searching over the years to discover
at what moment the thing had happened.

“I haven’t changed,” she murmured often to herself.

She was even as beautiful as ever she was. She examined her hands,
her face, even shyly her body, alone before the minor. No, she had not
changed, and did not know that in this very fact lay the secret of Evan’s
change.

For it was Evan’s curse that he had a gentleman’s conscience, and that
he had in his way loved Jonathan more than he had ever loved any human
being. Never except with Jonathan had his mind met the mind of another
human being. Even now, when he and Jonathan had been years separated,
he found himself remembering the hours of talk with Mm, when as two
young men they had told one another everything, had argued and quar-
reled, but always had trusted one another. With Jonathan he had been
himself, his good self, large and honest and free. Jonathan had been hh
foil and Ms inspiration. He had whetted himself on Jonathan, handsome
because Jonathan was plain, gay because Jonathan was sober, a tempest
beside Jonathan’s calm. He had continued to love Jonathan because Jon-
athan alone of all the people he had known made him his best. And he
knew that he was at Ms happiest when he was also at Ms hmt He laughed
at Ms own tricks but despised them. He could not enjoy dishonesty.

As for Judy, he had ceased to love her when he understood that he
could never hope for more from her than the beauty of her body. He

286

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

eajoyed her beauty especially when they were in public places. Alone with
■her, its satisfaction was swiftly- over. There were no depths to it. He found
himself wishing often that under the lovely face he might also have found
-an' exciting mind.'

‘'Uiireasonable,” ■ he thought now, looking down into the lovely face.
For he' had taken ' her in his arms suddenly at this moment in a quick
shallow hurst of passion, stimulated by the thought of Jonathan’s coming,

“You’re not sorry you ran away with me, Judy?’’ he whispered.

She closed her eyes and put her white hand against his lips. “Never,
Evan—if only you love me!”

He kissed her swiftly. “Of course,” he said, and let her go. What per-
versity not to love a woman more because she loved Mm so much! But
Judy was in perpetual surrender, and he loved excitement.

He kissed her once again, lightly, his passion gone in a whirlwind as small
and useless as a toss of leaves in the middle of the road on a summer’s
day. He smiled, pulled her little ear, glanced at himself in the mirror, and
went away.

Her eyes followed him with their large dark gaze, and when he was
gone she went to the window as she always did when he left her. If he
left the house she watched him, and when he did not, she stared out into
the street. But behind the curtain her childish hand held from her face
she now saw a slender sand-colored man step from a hired hack and pause
for a moment. He lifted his head and looked at the house, and the look
seemed to fall upon her, direct as a beam from a lamp. She shrank beMnd
the curtain and hid her face in her hands.

“Oh!” she murmured, “He’s just the same!” She sat down on her rose-
colored taffeta chair, and waited to see whether Evan would send for her.

Downstairs in the library, Evan and Jonathan looked at each other after
many years. Evan saw Jonathan, but between him and Evan Jonathan saw
Judy. Evan was Judy’s husband. TMs was Judy’s home. Through these
rooms she moved every day. Her hands perhaps had arranged the bowl
of roses on Evan’s desk. A large silver photograph stood beside the roses,
and he could not see the face it held, yet doubtless it was hers.

“Well, Jonathan!” Evan filled his voice with heaitiness. He had risen
to shake Jonathan’s hand and then had sat down again behind his desk.
He had planned to be formal and full of business, but the sight of Jonathan
in his usual gray garb, sitting quietly before Mm, moved him to an im-
pulsiveness he did not often feel in these days of his increasing success.
He saw governorship clearly ahead of him.

“We’ll take up where we left off, Jonnie.” His fine smile made his face
young enough for Jonathan to recognize him. His first thought had been
how much Evan was changed. The even, early gray in his dark hair made
him strange.

THE TOWNSMAN 287

" TisE’t for aBything past that Fve oome, Evan,” he said
for a thing I want now..*'

■Evan withdrew his smile. ‘*What can I do for yon now?”

''I want quite' a lot of money, it happens,” Jonathan said irmly.
for Median and not me. Looks as though we’ll get the county seat unless
Ashbee protests the election, and if they do, it’ll help us to say we have
funds for the courthouse.”

Evan’s smile glimmered. *‘You wouldn’t let me have a. cattle , town. I
might take my revenge now, Jonnie, .1 wouldn’t put It above my doing.”

"A county seat’s a, dignified, respectable thing,” Jonathan said, “very;
difierent from a rumbling, tumbling cattle town. A county seafU bring
churches into Median and law and order of all kinds. The people that buy
lots in the town’E be the better sort as have to do with such things.” He
looked steadily at Evan with his cool gray eyes.

He’s forgotten Judy, Evan was thinking. He’s an odd, cold chap, but
Fm fond of him still, somehow, though he’M never be anything but the
principal of a small-town school.

“Still building Median, Jonnie!” he said aloud. “How far have you got
on that map we made together?”

“Schoolhouse is up, post office, and after the courthouse I aim to start
the church. Fve got a young chap in mind for the preacher, though just
now he’s out among the Indians. But FU draw him back maybe with the
church.”

“Do you have children?” Evan’s question was a thrust.

“A boy and a girl,” Jonathan replied.

“Ah, you’re luckier than I am,” Evan said significantly. “Judy has never
.had' a child.” ■ .

The name fell between them like a stone, and Jonathan was struck to
silence. For a moment he could not speak, try as he did. His heart, so
carefully hidden even from himself, pounded under his gray coat; and
Evan, watching him, saw a dull red creep into his colorless cheeks.

He still thinks about her, Evan thought with cool pity. He turned the
big photograph frame on the table abruptly to face Jonathan. “She’s
changed very little,” he said carelessly.

Jonathan did not move by a hair. His hands upon his knees he held
there. But with all his heart he gazed upon Judy’s face. She was very
beautiful. In the richness of her evening dress and the jewels about her
bare neck, he saw her as infinitely handsomer and more stately than be
remembered her. How ill she would have fitted his small plain home, he
thought suddenly. No, Katie was the sort of woman anyone would expect
to see come out of his door, a busy housewife of a woman, her face clean
and brown, but not one to look at twice*

“What’s past is long gone,” Evan said. He laughed a little. “I used to
think Judy might be a bit skittish, Jon, as pretty girls often are. But she

288

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

settled iato marriage like a cat by, a fire. Never has a thouglit onlside the
house,, apparently.” .

"He felt himself seized by an absurd desire to tell Jonathan that some-
,how Ms marriage had been a disappointment, to him, as though disappoint-
ment were expiation of the betrayal of Ms friend.

^‘Judy’s a -strange woman, Jonathan,”' he said abruptly.

'^Indeed/* Jonathan said stiffly. He did not want to hear Evan talk about
Judy. No, nor did he like to hear any man talk about Ms wife.

Evan saw the pale plain face grow stem. There was to be no expiation
there! He laughed uneasily. ‘‘You’re thinking that I made my own bed.”

“I am thinking only about my business,” Jonathan retorted. “Will you
do what I ask?” But Ms heart was pounding ah through Ms body. How
dared this man be disappointed in his love? But had Judy indeed repented
of what she had done? Did her coldness come from deep within her? “Does
she Still remember me?” his heart demanded. He gripped his heart with
his will and choked it into silence.

“We!!, Evan?” he asked and made his voice as dry as rustling winter
cornstalks.

Evan put the picture back. “What’s your proposition?”

“Ten thousand dollars, at six per cent, the new town lots to be security.”

“Can you sell them?”

“In time we can.”

“What time?”

“Ten years.”

“What’s the population now?”

“Three thousand two hundred and ten.”

“That include niggras?”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Jonathan’s pale eyes hashed a cold spark, and Evan
laughed.

“Still think a lot of niggras, eh. Ion?”

“No more than of anybody else, but as much.”

Evan leaned forward. “Say, what’s become of that boy you sent to
France?”

“He graduated last year from the Academy of Surgery in Paris, France.
He’s married a young Frenchwoman,”

“You don’t say! But the French are whiter

“I believe so,” Jonathan said very coldly.

Evan drew in Ms breath. “Weil, it couldn’t happen here.”

“Beaumont himself rather proves it can.”

“What do you mean?” Evan demanded.

“Beaumont’s father was white.”

“Come now, Jon—that’s dfflerent, and you know it.”

“I do not know it.”

Jonathan’s thin body was erect with embattlement, and suddenly Evan
laughed. “You haven’t changed a hair of your head, Jonnie!”

THE TOWNSMAN

289

“I hope I have not on this subject at least,” Jonathan said severely,

''Well, you haven’t, and let’s shut up. Now, about' this money. 'You shil
have it. I don’t mind saying I wouldn’t think of laying out that:iiiuch for
Median if it weren’t for you, Jonathan. Median’s not my kind of a town.
Now, here in Topeka we’ve just issued bonds for the new trolley-car system,
and that’s a sound investment. Trolleys will be wanted as long as , the city
stands. But I doubt Median ever grows to the point of needing them. In
fact, there’s no real reason for Median to grow.”

Jonathan broke in, 'T have no desire to see Median grow only in size.
What kind of people live in Median means .more than how many there
,are. And we’ve a good kind of folk there now. They’re honest— barring'
an old-timer or two like Henry Drear, who sees things always off the end
of his gun the way it used to be when the country was wild. You needn’t
be afraid your money wouldn’t come back out of taxes.”

"As long as you’re alive, Fll have my security,” Evan said. His good
smile made the words very warm.

"Thanks,” Jonathan said. He rose. "I aim to live a long life.”

"I hope so,” Evan said. He pressed a beU and, when Marcus appeared,
rose and followed Jonathan to the library door. "Good-by, Jonathan. Fm
glad you came.”

"Thanks, Evan.”

The two men clasped hands for a swift instant and parted, each aware
that they were not brothers as they had been, and so they were not sorry
to part.

In the hall, Jonathan put on his coat quickly and took his hat from the
Negro, He wanted to be away out of this house, and yet he could not
keep from glancing about him and up the stair. It was so silent a house. Not
a sound could be heard from the carpeted and curtained rooms. From all
that ear told, it might have been empty. Marcus opened the door and
bowed; and Jonathan, nodding his head, went out. Behind him the door
closed softly.

But he stood before it with a strange hesitating clairvoyance, as though
the closing had not been final. Was this all or not? He wanted to go, but
he did not feel free to go yet. And even as he stood, the door opened
again suddenly, and Judy stood there.

The moment he saw her he knew that this was why he had come, and
that he could not have gone away without it. She was more beautiful than
his deepest memory had remembered. She was a woman of cream and
roses beneath her softly piled curls, her red dress a vase for her beauty.
In her little ears were pearls, and on her white neck a fine gold chain,
and he saw everything about her—every color and tint and shape, the deep
sweet corners of her red mouth and her glorious eyes and her upfiung
lashes. He had never seen a pretty girl until he saw Judy, and he had
never seen a beautiful woman until he saw her now.

She spoke at last. "Jonathan, I couldn’t quite just— let you go.”

■■290

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

;,He w:as speechless, gazing at her, and she put out her hand to' him.,

‘'Yon aren’t still 'angry with me, Jonathan?”

■ 'He shook Ms head and felt her hand .in Ms hand' that was trembling
in ' a palsy at what It held She looked tMs' way and that and whispered,
think you loved me best, after all, Jonathan.”'

' He could not speak. He put her little hand to Ms lips and then knew
what he did and turned himself and ran down the steps and into the wait-
ing hack. Then he took one backward look at the door. She was standing
there, the hand he had kissed against her mouth,

'*Get' on,” he groaned to the hack driver. As the vehicle clattered down
the, street, he bent Ms head and sMelded Ms face with his hand, full of
horror at himself, Fm not fit to be trusted neai' her, he thought. I love her
still.

^‘Did you get the money?” Katie’s voice, her face across the supper
table, the children between them to be served and fed, were what he had
every night. Nothing was better, notMng worse.

‘Tes, I got it,” he said.

Katie stared at him, “You ain’t sick, are you, Jonathan?” she asked.
He looked more than usually pale, and he had eaten almost nothing of
the fried liver and potatoes,

“No, Fm-tired.”

“I thought maybe a day in the city would liven you up,” she said.

He smiled faintly at this. “Do you feel I should be more lively?” he
inquired.

He had entered his home tonight under the fresh shadow of his strong
debt to Katie. He owed very much to this hard-working good woman who
belonged in his house and made of it a place suitable for a man like Mm.
Judy would have been a bird of paradise, and what would a plain chap
like him have done with her?

“Fm Sony Fm dull, Katie,” he said gently. “I. did hear some interesting
things. There’s to be trolleys in Topeka—”

“Just so’s you ain’t sick is all I care,” Katie said.

But in the night, lying sleepless in the bed beside her, he suddenly longed
to confess all his heart to Katie. It would ease him to share the weight
of Ms love, to tell her that because he had loved another woman and today
knew he still loved her and would now love her always, he would make
eternal amends to her for having married her. He put out his hand, and
then he drew it back and lay in long self-examination. Why should he
want to tell Katie a thing too great for her to bear? She would never
comprehend it. So long as she lived she would stagger under the knowledge.

Another man would leave Katie, he thought bitterly, but I can’t— I
wouldn’t, I care too much for what Fve built up here In Median.

Yes, he was the sort who could love a woman with all this power and
agony, and yet he would not give up what he was to that love. He could

THE TOWNSMAN

291 ,'.

not forsake himself even for love. He lay on,- sleepless through the night.

But Fm never to be left alone in the room with Judy,, he thought. If
ever we meet again, it’s never to be alone.

He rose early before Katie ■ stirred and stole into the kitchen and, lit
the fire for her and put the kettle on and then made Mmself a cup of
tea and set the table for brealdast. She came bustling in while he was busy
and cried, ‘'My goodness, you don’t have to help me, Jonathan,!”

•But he knew it was her wry way of thanking him. ■

“Dad’s married to Jennet,” Jamie said in the manner of one who makes
a joke..

Jonathan looked up from a pile of architects’ plans he was, spreading
over the dining table.' An hour ago Jamie had come riding up to the kitchen,
door.

“Jamie, what are you saying?” he cried.

“Sure, Dad’s married Jennet Drear,” Jamie repeated, grinning.

“He’s never!” Jonathan said.

“That Jennet!” Katie shrilled.

“Seems she was there when he came in one night, and so it kind of
—happened,” Jamie said.

“How’d she come to be there at all?” Katie demanded. She remembered
Jennet as one who was a plain little girl remembers an older and pretty
one, with a prickling of old envy.

“Weil, she came over from the next ranch where she lived for a while,”
Jamie said with the proper deceit before women and children. Later he
might tell Jonathan the truth. His old childish admiration for his father
made him laugh now at Clyde’s marrying again.

Suddenly Jonathan gathered up his papers and stalked out. He wanted
to be alone that he might comprehend why he was so angry with his father.
He stepped through the shadows and moonlight upon the grass and went
up the steps of the schoolhouse and into his office and lit the oil lamp on
the desk. He threw the roil of plans upon the floor and sat down and,
thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, stared across the room.

A map of Europe hung on the wall, and he saw of! in one comer of
it the small oblong that was England. His mother would have been alive
now if they could have stayed there. She had died because his father was
impatient of work and steadiness and all that which Englishmen knew
was righteousness. And now even as an old man he had not the decency
to stay a widower for her sake, who lay so small and forlorn in her little
grave in these huge plains!

“Oh, my poor wee!” he cried silently. In the spot upon the map he
saw the green isle where she belonged.

But, no, Ms father must marry a red-haired woman who had wandered
in and out of western towns and mining camps and who knew what else?

And then in his fearful honesty he went deep into his hatred for bis

292

AMERICAN , TRIPTYCH

fatlier and found its roots. It- was tliat once again, as gaily as a boy, Clyde
bad taken tbe woman be wanted, a tblng he bimself conld not do. '

' Fm a wicked and deceitful man, be tboogbt, pretending Fm crying for
my motber’s sake! It*s Judy Fm tbinking of again—and always will, I reckon.

■He sat a moment, Ms lips pursed together, and then be stooped and
picked up Ms plans.

It was nearly six o’clock of a summer’s day of tbe next year when be
heard footsteps upon the cinder path which led from his own house to
the open door of the schoolhouse. He had been uneasily conscious that
Katie would be sending for him at any moment to come to supper. She
divided her day into the three crises of meals, and nothing disturbed her
more fiercely than to be ready to ‘‘dish up” and he not there. He yielded
to her in such small tyrannies, though now he delayed.

He thought for a second before he looked up that the step was Maggie’s
plump footfall. But tMs was not Maggie. He looked up, and a strange man
stood In the door. The late afternoon sunshine of a summer day falling
through a dusty western window showed him a tall man, broad-shouldered,
strong-legged, Ms face shaven as though he were young and yet lined
enough to show Mm not young. He was dressed In a new gray suit, wMch
fitted him ill, and bis step bad been tbe heavier for bis new yellow leather
shoes.

“You Jonathan Goodiiffe?”

Tbe man leaned arm and hand against tbe door jamb.

“I am,” Jonathan replied. He showed bis cautious English origin. Any-
one else in Median would have cried to the man to come in, but Jonathan
waited.

“You don’t know me?” the man said.

“I can’t say I do,” Jonathan answered.

“Ever see me before?”

Jonathan examined tbe sunburned face before Mm. “Can’t say I have,”

“Ever hear the name George Tenney?”

Jonathan stared again, and now the face seemed younger and familiar.
“You were on the ship coming from England.”

“I was, and I gave you my name and you never sent me a word about
Maggie, though you said you would.”

“I didn’t take that serious,” Jonathan said, smiling.

THE TOWNSMAN

293'

George Tenney stood, : Ms' ams still stretched across tlie door , and gaxed

at Jonathan. 'T’d ha’ known yon anywhere/’ he said at last

daresay I don’t change,” Jonathan said calmly. ‘‘Come in,” he added.

But now there were Maggie’s footsteps, hearty .and hurrying.

“Jonathan!” Her clear loud young voice shouted through the sttence of
the evening. “Supper!” ,

“That’s Maggie,” George Tenney said.

“How did you know?” Jonathan asked.

“I know Maggie,” George replied. A shy peculiar look came over Ms
face and he looked over his shoulder. Then Maggie came , near and stood
staring with young severity at the big man in the door.

“Well?” she Inquired tartly.

George Tenney’s blue eyes smiled down at her. “Walk under my arm
and let me see if you’re the right size,” he said slowly.

Maggie took quick offense. Girls were valued and indulged in Median,
being too few.

“I don’t see as my size has anything to do with you!” she cried. The
curly ends of her red hair sprang out about her face in the wind.

“It’s got a lot to do with me-I’m George Tenney,” he said.

He could not have asked for more than the vivid red that rushed into
Maggie’s face.

“Did you get my letter?”

She flung up her head. “What letter?”

“You didn’t answer it, so I come to see for myself.”

“I don’t answer strangers,” she cried.

“I’m no stranger,” he said in his slow deep voice. “Walk under my arm,
Maggie.” She did not move, and he repeated the words, but now they were
not a command. His eyes smiled at her.

She stood rebellious and unwilling and shy. But she was struggling to it
to this man the vague man beMnd the letter which she kept all these
months. She kept the two for a moment, and then the real man grew
strong beside the conjured shadow, and suddenly, without bending her
head, she walked under his arm. He dropped Ms hand to her shoulder.

“You’re just the size I wanted you should be,” he said gently. With his
hand still on her shoulder he turned to Jonathan. “I’ll come and take supper
with you, Jonathan, seeing as I’m to be one of the family.”

“Maggie’s too young for you, George,” Jonathan said.

Throughout the meal he said almost nothing, wMle the children were
there. He simply watched George Tenney as he ate and drank and made
friends with one cMid after another, and deferred to Katie with “ma’ams”
and “thank yous.” He was pleased that to each child this man made a
gentle new approach. To little Jon he spoke of work as gravely as he would
to a man.

“Cattle’s my business,” he said. “I herd ’em up from Texas by the thou-
sand. It’s a mean job while it lasts, but the pay’s good. But I don’t aim

294

AlS^mRICAN TRIPTYCH

to Stay in it. Fve got other Irons in my fire— a ranch, for one thing, with
bosses, and if yonr pa’ii let you, Fd like you to come out and give me a
hand some summer. You can take your pick of the coltsF’'

“Can I, Father?’* Jon asked, yearning. He was a stocky, strong boy, more
like his grandfather Lew than he was his own father.

“Maybe,” Jonathan replied.

George teased Lula about her blond curls.

“Store curls, Fll swear,” he said. “They don’t grow on your head. You’ve
bought ’em and stuck ’em on with glue.”

“I never!” Lula cried happily, pulling her curls to show.

“And them pink cheeks are painted on and real eyes ain’t blue like
yours. You’re just a store doll-baby.”

“No— no— no!” Lula screamed, laughing. “Fm real!”

“Come here and let me feel your sawdust,” George said gravely. He
pinched her little arm. “No, damn if she ain’t real, Jonathan! I wouldn’t
ha’ believed it. She looks like a store doli, but she ain’t.”

And while he was talking and teasing, his arm was about Mary, small
and quiet and dark. He did not tease her or notice her overmuch, and she
stood contentedly in that large shelter. Jonathan liked it that through the
evening George was content to be with them all, and that he did not hasten
to be with Maggie alone. There had to be talk between them before he
would leave Maggie alone with this man almost old enough to be her fa-
ther. Maggie was more quiet than she had ever been in her life, and no
one could tell what she was thinking. When the younger children went to
bed, she rose, saying to Katie, “I’ll make the bread tonight, Katie,” and
went to the kitchen.

So the three of them were left alone; and Katie, her mouth set, took
up her mending basket. Jonathan would speak, but she would listen and
uphold him. She wanted Maggie married and out from her care, but only
if this was the man Jonathan wanted in the family.

“I am old for Maggie,” George Tenney admitted, “but still not old as
men go. Fm forty to Maggie’s eighteen. But I’m a young forty, and she’s
an old eighteen. Girls are women early out hyere. And I don’t want some-
buddy soappin’ her up. Fve thought about Maggie as mine a good many
years now.”

“It doesn’t seem possible a man could remember a baby,” Jonathan said.

“’Twasn’t a baby but Maggie I remembered.”

Jonathan pondered a moment on Maggie’s life, a troublesome healthy
child, a troublesome healthy girl, but to him no more. “You’d find her a
handful,” he said,

“Fve broken bosses aplenty,” George Tenney said. “Always by gentlin’*
I never took a whip to one. And Fd rather do the breakin’ than leave it
to another— never liked a boss in my life that another man broke.”

“I don’t like the cattle business.”

“Nor I, and Fm gettin’ out of it into bosses, I’ve got my ranch, and I

THE TOWNSMAN

295

own half a gold mine that’s got pay dirt. 1 aim to give my wife, a piano
and her own carriage if she wants,”

Katie looked up from the sock over her hand. ‘'‘Maggie’s that head-
strong,” she .said, ■■

' ‘‘Yes, ma’am, I can see' she is,” George replied, with deference, Jona-
than’s wife was the respectable, managing, housekeeping woman common
to the country, salt of the earth, he thought, liking her, and plain as. ail git
out He thought of Maggie’s round pink cheeks and blue eyes and firm
round body. He. liked women to have body.

Katie, catching Jonathan’s eyes, rose. They said as plainly as speech
that he wanted her to go, and she went. When the two men were alone,
Jonathan cleared Ms throat

“George, in a manner of speaking, I stand in the place of father to
Maggie,”

“Your old man passed on?” George’s hearty voice was full of respect
for death.

“No, hut he doesn’t give heed,” Jonathan said. “And for my dead
mother’s sake I must ask you if in your own opinion you’re fit to marry a
young pure girl. If you were her age I wouldn’t ask it. But a cattleman’s
had~temptations. And you have had twenty years of it.”

“Of temptation?” George bellowed out laughter. “Well, if I have, I’ve
resisted most of the time. I won’t say I’m a virgin, Jonathan, for I’m not
You couldn’t hardly find a man that was—west of the Mississippi, that is.
But I’m clean, if that’s your trouble, and now that I’ve found my girl,
anything else is over. There ain’t but two kinds of women in the world,
good and bad, and the bad uns are only temporary in a man’s life.”

He spoke with confidence in the simple God who had created woman
and therefore knew his material, and Jonathan did not contradict him.
Katie was the good. Jennet was the bad. And what was Judy except herself?
But perhaps there was no other like Judy in the world,

“Well, I stiH say you’re old or she’s young, one or the other. But I
reckon Maggie’il have to make up her own mind,” he said unwillingly.

“Fm agreeable to leave it to Maggie,” George said. He rose. “Will I
go out to the kitchen?”

“I can send her in here,” Jonathan said. He felt a faint repulsion toward
the excitement he saw creeping into George’s eyes.

“Fd rather go and find her in the kitchen,” George said.

“Good night, then,” Jonathan said abruptly.

Upstairs in the bedroom he shared with Katie he undressed himself and
placed his garments m the careful order habitual to him.

Katie was already in bed. “You goin’ to let him have her?” she asked.

“Maggie’il do what she likes,” he said. He blew out the light and, wrap-
ping Ms nightshirt about his knees, he climbed into bed and stretched his
slender body and sighed. He was tired of love and all its ways. He had
other things to do, and he would put this- far from. him. But he was glad to

296

AMERJCAN TRIPTYCH

have Maggie gone early from his home. He could not cope with passion.

all right?” Katie inquired. She reached through the darkness and
put her hand on his forehead. *‘You don’t fee! biliGUS, do yon?”

'•No, I don’t think so,” he said mildly. He felt suddenly grateful to her.
"You’re too good a cook to make a man bilious, Katie/’ he said.

"Oh, get out,” Katie replied, but he could feel her happiness.

She fell asleep quickly after that, but he lay long' awake, aware of what
was in the kitchen beneath this room. He was not disturbed, but he fell
into pondering on the distances that lay between man and woman. That
abyss he would never cross. Never so long as he lived would he know
what a woman really was. For into that heaven, too, the gate was narrow
and the way strait. Not through many women did a man come Into it,
but only through one. And if that one were denied him, or if he denied
her, then heaven was closed.

But perhaps other men were not like him? He considered this a moment
and put it aside. I’ve no reason to think myself anything but an ordinary
man, he thought.

He fell asleep at last, long before those two in the kitchen had parted.

George Tenney sat in the old kitchen armchair that was padded with
plaited rags and held Maggie upon his knee. The range was hot with wood
he had thrown in.

"We might as well be warm,” he had said when he came in. Her bread
was made, and she was waiting. Then he had drawn Maggie into his arms.
‘T’m glad you’ve growed into something hefty, my girl,” he said. “I never
did like little bits of kindlin’ wood.”

Maggie’s cheeks were scarlet, and she laughed loudly. "I’m too big,” she
said.

"Not for me,” George said,

'Tve outgrown everything,” she said proudly, "so my brother Jonathan
told me to make myself two new dresses.”

"Did you make this one?” he asked. He smoothed the bright green stuff
over her round thighs. He was going to be very gentle with this young
thing. She was hot as fire, he could see, and heady for any man, because
she did not know herself what she was. Better for that kind to be married
quick and young and to a man old enough to handle them! He was right
to come before another man had begun the job. His smoothing hand crept
up over her waist and her young breast. She caught it back.

"Don’t!” she said sharply, and tried to rise from his knee.

But he held her firmly. "Wait,” he commanded. "Fll never do that again
if you don’t want I should. I’ve talked with Jonathan, and he says you’re
to do as you like. So— will you have me, Maggie?”

She quieted. "I don’t hardly know you,”

"You know me, but you don’t remember.”

"But you only came back today!”

THE TOWNSMAN

297

■ *'Did yoE keep my letter I sent yon as ■ you didn’t answer?” ■

: She hung her head. ^‘It’s here,” she said, and put her hand on her breast
‘Was that why you pushed my hand away?”

:She did not answer, but her ready blood was beating. She w^as trem-
biing into love with Mm, He was handsomer than any boy' in Median, a
handsome man, the sort of man she liked, with big shoulders and sturdy
legs, and strong hands and a voice you could hear across a held. And she
was only a girl, and sometimes she feared not such a very pretty girl Her
body began to ache, and she looked at him. And suddenly she Md, her.
face on his shoulder. ,

■ He held her as though she had been three. “There,” he murmured,
“there— there—therel I ain’t goin’ to hurry, or force you in any way. You
shall come along as you want to, my little Mags.”

But she seized Ms hand and pressed it against her bosom where his letter
lay.

“That’s where it is,” she whispered and held his hand hard upon her
hot young flesh.

In a month there were left in Jonathan’s home only the three children,
his own son and daughter and Ms small sister Mary. George Tenney went
away and came back twice, and the third time he and Maggie were mar-
ried. The marriage was right. Jonathan liked the man better each time he
came, though he had little learning and never in his life had read a book
from beginning to end. But few men had in these parts, and Maggie herself
was no great reader.

In that month she grew into a woman ready for marriage. Her nature
was defined by love. She was prudent in spending the little money Jona-
than could spare her, and she did not once quarrel with Katie. Instead,
she busied herself with recipes and ways of cooking, learning willingly all
that she had rebelled against before. Katie was generous and taught her
and helped her with advice and bade her choose what she liked from the
store. Maggie exclaimed warmly over this kindness to Jonathan one day as
he weeded the vegetable garden.

“Though there isn’t much there,” she added practically. “The store’s
gone down somethmg terrible, Jonathan,”

He looked up from his beets. “Has it?” he said sharply. “How, Maggie?”

“Weil, the stock’s poor,” Maggie said, “and Mrs. Merridy isn’t there
much, and the boys take what they want to eat, and old Mr. Cobb is real
lazy. He only works when Katie comes in or Mrs. Merridy.”

“Hi have to talk with Katie,” Jonathan said. He deliberately did not talk
about the store with her, feeling upon him the uneasy knowledge of her
wish that he would return to it. But maybe he owed it to Lew. Besides,
Median wanted a good general store. He put it off until after the wedding.

The wedding was in the new church. The small wooden building had
been finished, a few months ago under Stephen Parry*. It now belonged to

298 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

ail tMe deHomlaatiom alike, tlie Episcopalians who were few, -the Baptists
and' '.Fresbyterians who were more, and the Methodists who because they
were., .most had two Sunday mommgs out of the month. But Jonathan had
seen, to it' also that a .strange sect' from Russia had the church: to themselves
o.iice a month, too, though in the afternoon. They were^ Mennonites and
f armers, and they had come to Kansas hearing in th.eir hands little bundles
tied in kerchiefs. These held their most precious possession, the seed , of a
hard red wheat.

Traveling preachers held the meetings of the denominations, but in his
heart Jonathan dreamed of a church where one' man would be the minister
for al, and that man Paul Graham. But Median was not ready for it. He
had sounded out the people .and had been hotly a.ccused -of believing in
state religion, in the English fashion.

“ Tlsn’t that I believe state and church should be one,” he denied,
that I don’t see the good of waste. Whaf s it mean but that our folk will
build six churches and struggle to pay half a dozen, preachers and al the
time they’re worshiping the one God?”

But he gave up for the time and satisfied himself by inviting Paul Graham
to come and marry Maggie and George, and advise him about uniting
Median’s souls. He liked Paul more than ever, a pale, grave, slender young
priest. Then he was startled because he saw Paul’s eyes on his sister Mary,
who was still only a child. He was so put out by this that he let the matter
of church unity rest. Might it be better not to have Paul living in Median?
He was perturbed on the day of the wedding because Mary looked so
pretty and grown up in her long bridesmaid’s dress, and he was so cool to
Paul that the sensitive young man was alarmed.

**Have I ofiended you, sir?” he asked before the ceremony. He was
gowned in his ministerial robes and waiting with George and Jonathan in
the little vestry.

But Jonathan was unable to put his irritation into words. It was beyond
him to say to Paul, ‘‘My sister is too young for a man to look at her as
though she were an angel.”

“Of course not,” he said shortly, and decided that he would not press
Paul to stay on after this wedding day. So the matter of Median’s unity
in religion was put off into the future by so human a thing.

Median was too big now to come entire to a wedding, and Maggie had
invitations printed, the first that Median had ever seen. A new little paper
was sweating its way into print once a week, and this was its first wedding.
The editor was the boy whose mother had accused Jonathan of paying no
heed to drunkenness in Median. Jonathan had discovered in him an apti-
tude for words, and out of it had grown the boy’s wish to make a news-
paper.

“Why not?” Jonathan had replied. “Median’s big enough now for its
own paper.” He talked gravely about type and headlines and what news

THE TOWNSMAN

299

;was,. and now every day or two the freckled young editor' came loping
down the street .

“What’d you think of today’s paper, Mr. Goodliffe? How’d you think

I handled the new populist trouble?’’ "

Yesterday he had said solemnly, *Tm going, to cover your sister’s wed-
ding myself, sir,” and all during the ceremony he wrote feverishly upon a
pad on his knee. , Jonathan, walking up the aisle with Maggie’s hand on his
arm, saw a bent brown head look up and stare and bend to scribble again
upon the pad.

He went on to the slowly pacing wedding march Martha Cobb was play-
ing on the little organ. Someday he must , find time to think about , a, big
organ for the church. It was a pretty church. What would his mother think
if she could know that there was a church in Median? Or If she knew
that the fat, naughty little girl whom she had so often scolded and some-
times slapped had grown into this young bride? But Maggie had changed
very little. All she had been was simply increased in quantity. He felt the
vague stirring of his dry humor and repressed it.

After the wedding was over and they were all in his house for cake and
lemonade, he took George aside.

*‘My mother used to say Maggie needed smacking once in a while.
Don’t be too gentle with her.”

“Don’t you worry,” George said, grinning. “I can keep the upper hand,
at my age.”

He saw them out of his door and on the puffing noisy little train that was
to carry them westward. There were no more wagons these days. People
went West from Median on trains, though Jonathan had never set foot
in one of them. He put a ten-doliar bill into Maggie’s hand as she kissed
his cheek, and then she put her arms around him and kissed him again.

“You’ve done too much for me as it is,” she whispered.

“Take it,” he said. “What’s it for but to use?”

“But you could use it I”

“I have what I need, I reckon.” He pushed her away a little, not know-
ing he did so. The smell of her warm body, perspiring freshly, was sweet
enough, but not for him. “Good-by, good-by,” he said, and turned back to
his own home.

Because he knew that he would never leave Katie he was glad when
this earthy pair were gone from his house. He and Katie were a common-
sensible pair, and both of them had been faintly ashamed before one an-
other while George and Maggie had been in the house. The two could
not hide their frank passion and their eagerness for marriage.

Yet when he opened the door of his house its stillness smote him.

One by one he was sending them away from him, the children his mother
had left him, and soon it would be his own children, he thought. Then he
and Katie would be left alone, with no one between them for a shield.
When that day comes, Fll be old, he thought. Then he put old age far

AMEEieAH- TRIPTYCH'

from Mm. Fve a lot to. do first, he thought firmly... He ' glaoced the
coiuthOHse in the middle of the square. They had had to take away some
of his trees when the-fouedatioos were, laid, hut he had let only the.cottoa*
woods be cut. The hardwoods he had traospianted.

They're permanent, he always, thought when he passed .them,. When-
ever he planted a tree now, and he had the school children plant them
somewhere In Median every spring, he always planted hardwoods.

The Su,nflower Oil Company, Jamie discovered, was Evan Bayne, the
new candidate for the governorship of the state. Jamie had been living
these months In Ruth’s house. He slept there at night and spent the days
on his horse examining every acre of the surrounding country. He bought
three hundred acres and options on three times as much before his savings
ran out. Then he cast about for' resources, and Matthew told him of the
Sunflower, ' '

Without capital to offer, he went to Topeka to find the manager and to
proffer himself for a job in the company. None of his land had produced
of! yet, but it might at any moment. For a young man his assets were
good, even if he had BO cash.

Evan, taking shrewd stock of him, thought so too. A handsome fellow,
this brother of Jonathan’s! There was no trace in him of Jonathan’s mild
English look and ways. He was tall and bold-looking, his closely cut black
hair was rough with a curl that could not be shorn, and his mouth was
firm. It suddenly occurred to Evqn that his sister Laura was coming to
visit him, and that the last time she had come she had declared that if he
did not produce at least one' eligible young man, she would come no more.
She had no time to waste, she had said. . . . Was this young man eligible?

*T rather think I might be able to do something for you,” Evan said.
*T'm very fond of your brother,” He shot his eyebrows up, watching to
discover what lamie knew about that.

Jamie’s face did not show him. course I wouldn’t want you to do
anything for me because of Jonathan. I’d expect to stand on my own feet.”

“Of course-”

A young woman came into the room. She was dressed in the new man-
nish shirtwaist and skirt, and her Intensely black hair was pompadoured
about her pale face. She was not pretty, and when she was not Introduced
lamie dismissed her. But as sc>on as she spoke he looked at her again.

TOE TOWNSMAN' ' 301

She had a voice as deep and soft as the heavy string on^ a iddle. It went
to his spine.

“Did yon rings: Mr, Bayne?'’

“'rhls is my secretary, Miss Power,” Evan said, “Rachel, when's Laura^
coming?”

/“Saturday, sir.”

Evan frowned a little. Why not?' If both birds were killed with' one
stone, or if neither, no damage was done.

“Come along to my house Saturday night,” he said to Jamie. “We dine
at seven. Afterwards, we can talk. Rachel, be sure I have the last igures
on S'unflower before then.”

“Yes, sir.” Again the deep, sweet voice.

' “Suits me, sir.” 'Jamie rose.

The dark girl held out a card upon which she had been writing quickly.
“Your memorandum, sir.”

His spine quivered again, and he looked down into a narrow, clever
face, still not pretty, but wise enough to confound him.

“Th“thanks,” he stammered. He went out, sweating a little. Gosh, Fd
hate to have her around me all the time, he thought He looked at the
card. Upon it in the neatest clearest script he had ever seen was all the in»
formation he could imagine, name, address, and hour for Saturday’s en-
gagement. In small bracketed letters she had even written [Dress].

“Weil, damn it, does she think I’ll go naked?” he wondered. He thrust
the card into his pocket and took it out again. There was something queer
about that bracketed word. He sauntered along and went into a men’s
clothing shop and accosted a man who wore striped pants and a long coat
and a high collar,

“What do you make of that?” he demanded, presenting the card.

The man took it and read it. “I should say it was a dinner appointment,
sir, to be attended in evening dress.”

Jamie grinned. “My evening dress is my nightshirt.”

The man grinned. “This isn’t that.”

“Show me what dress you’ve got for a man,” Jamie demanded.

In less than an hour he was fitted to garments he had not only never
worn before, but had never seen or heard of.

“Nifty,” the man murmured.

“I kind of agree with you,” Jamie said, looking at the young man in the
mirror.

Too handsome, Laura was thinking. Would I dare?

She was older than this man, perhaps by a year, perhaps by three. But
she was small, and he so big. Besides, she did not want to many anyone
she knew.

“I hate oil,” she said aloud. “It smells.”

Over her white shoulder she smiled into Jamie’s face. Not quite a gentle-

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

man, she was thinking, but then all the men she knew were gentlemen,
and they tired her.

“It smells,” Jamie agreed, “but how it pays!” His brown face broke
into a shimmering smile, and she laughed.

“You don’t mind money, do you!” she said.

“It’s what I’m lookin’ for most,” he said.

“More than anything?”

“When I get it. I’ll look for a wife,” he said impudently.

This girl made him feel like his dad. She drew the billy goat out of him
as no nice woman ever had done in his life. He must be nice because she
was his boss s sister. But he felt bold. He had not been here ten minutes
before Evan had told him there would be a place for him in the company
if he could agree to certain financial details.

You bet 1 11 agree, Mr. Bayne!” he had said. Then he saw that dark
girl again at his boss’s elbow, and he heard her deep voice.

I have the memoranda ready, but you won’t want to talk until after
dinner, will you, Mr. Bayne?”

“No— in the library, Rachel.”

She had slipped away, but at the dinner table she was at Evan’s elbow
again, her seat at his left. Jamie looked down the table at Judy.

Tonight when Evan introduced them she had bowed her head a very
little in answer to his bow. He remembered when he had seen her last, but
he did not tell her so. Now he wondered what she thought of this dark
girl at her husband’s elbow, whose violin voice, so seldom raised, was
always heard when it spoke. Anyone could see that it was to her that Evan
turned when he wanted anything. No use pretending that a man could
have a girl at his elbow all day and not grow to depend on her in all sorts
TOys-not that it was any of his business, now that Evan was his boss!

Can anything good come out of Kansas?” Laura’s pretty insistent voice
was at his ear.

“Me,” he said promptly.

“I thought you were English?”

“K I ever was, it’s been forgotten.”

“I met your brother once-he was very English.”

“Ym, Jonathan’s pretty much what he always was. He’s stayed in Me-
M the rest of us have scattered. Why. my old dad’s just run for new
land and almost got it, by Jiminy!”

“Not quite?”

“He te a game leg and his wagon broke down, or he’d have made it.”
Aod lonatban’s not going m for oil?*’

he’s a schoolteacher. He doesn’t want to be anything else. Median’s

THE TOWNSMAN

303

You’d Hever know we were brothers.’- ■ ' ,

*'Maybe Fd like him better than you.”

“ ’Twmild surprise me, but he’d be even more surprised.” •

She -laughed her quick, falling laughter. ‘‘I like you rather well,” she
said. Her great coquetry was to seem guiltless of any coquetry.

Jamie leaned toward her. ‘'Like me as well as you can, will you?”

«Why?”

“Because some day I might fail In love with you!”

“You are too quick,” she murmured. “We haven’t reached dessert, yet.”

■ ■ “Out where I come from we hurry,” he said.

Katie at the sitting-room window looked at the clock. It was six o-’clock
of the November day, and the sky was already black. Across the dead
lawn the light in the office of the schoolhouse burned. Jonathan was still
working. It used to be that she could see him through the curtaiiiless win-
dow. Then one day he said the light from the window was too strong, and
he had moved his desk so that now she could no longer see it.

“Maryl” Her voice rose high to the last syllable. “Oh, Mary!”

“Yessum?” Mary’s light and childlike voice floated through the floor
from her room upstairs.

“Go and call your brother to supper!”

“Yessumi”

Katie sighed and put down her sewing and went into the kitchen. She
wanted supper over because there was something she must tell Jonathan.
She had to tell him because she was sick and tired of holding her tongue
when people complained about the way he was running the school. Today
in the store she had had her fill, with fat Mrs. Tenber wanting her to ask
Jonathan why he didn’t let her Theodore pass the sixth grade.

“Three times he’s been through the same grade, Mis’ Goodiiffe, and still
Mr. Goodiiffe don’t let Mm pass it!”

“I reckon he’d pass if he was fit to pass!” she had said.

She was not afraid of any Mrs. Tenber, but it made her sick to think
of all that Jonathan did and yet anybody who felt like it could criticize Mm.
Schoolteaching was a thankless public job. And at the last meeting of the
trustees they had made it plain enough that Jonathan could never get a raise
in salary, not if he lived to be a hundred. She had quarreled with Jonathan
over that, not because she wanted more money, but because they had hurt
him. He was so gentle, so careful to explain to her why they had felt as
they did, that she knew he was deeply hurt,

“It’s perfectly natural that now, with aU these young chaps getting out
of universities In the East, they wouldn’t much want a chap like me, Katie.
I can see it”

“With al you’ve done!” she cried. “Every child like your own, and you
slaving away summer and winter, Saturdays and vacations and every-
thing!”

304

AMERICAN IWTYCH

“They don’t ask me to do that, though, Katie, If I wish to do it, I can
scarcely expect to be paid for It”

“Ain’t experience anything?”

He knew she stormed at them through him, and so he could be patient
with her, “WTiite Fve been getting experience Fve been getting older, too,
Katie.”

“TOat I hate is folks thinkin’ they have the say-so of you, bcause you’re
paid out of taxes. A miserable little pay, and it’s not your own when you’ve
got It! I wish you was in the store. Then you’d be beholden to nobody.”

“I can’t quit my rightful work, Katie.”

Neither of them mentioned the money for its own sake, she because she
did not w^'ant him to think she could not manage, and he because he felt
uneasily that he was deepening that vague great debt to her of Ms marriage.
Would it make it up to Katie, he often wondered, if he could provide her
with more comforts? But how could he give up his school?

In his office now he was preparing again for the quarterly meeting of
the school board. Times had changed very much from those days when
as a young schoolmaster he had simply gathered together his pupils. Sub-
scription school, it had been then, paid for by parents who wanted their
children taught. Now the schools were public. People grumbled at taxes
and then expected everything from the scanty dollars they paid. He loved
teaching, but the sinew of his life now could not go into it. He had to spend
himself upon this grinding down of every expense to meet an appropriation
100 small. In the sod house there had been so few books that each had been
precious. He had scarcely thought of the possibility of new books. Now
there were so many books required that they were no longer precious,
either to study or to possess. There were too many new ones for every
school term. Children came and went to school loaded with books and
earing for none of them. But he was still angry when he found a child
defacing a book with scrawls and drawings.

“A book is a treasury,” he always said. “You must learn how to find the
treasure. That is why you come to school” This was really the soul of
his teaching. But it was getting out of date, his sort of teacMng. People
were wanting a lot of new things that should not foe in a school. Girls could
learn them at home in their mothers’ kitchens, and boys could apprentice
themselves to blacksmiths and carpenters. School was a place to acquire
learning out of books which were the fruit of man’s knowledge and thought.
So he believed.

“Supper’s ready, Jonathan.”

He looked up and saw that Mary had run out of the kitchen in her
cotton school dress. He spoke quietly.

“Mary, why do you disobey me again about not putting on your cloak
in this weather?”

She looked astonished and then frigMened. “Honest, I forgot!”

She was so stricken that he smiled at her. She looked so like his mother

THE' TOWNSMAN

' 30'5

in these days of her new adolescence that he'coMd never scold her. It
always seemed when he did that he was scolding the dying creature who
had found her way back to him. ^1, notice you never forget anything, Katie,
tells you tO' do,” he grumbled,

■ “She keeps after me,” Mary murmured,

, “And I don’t, eh?”

' “You’re more peaceful-like.”

.He went on smiling without hearing her, his mind on his determination
to, refuse the demand of the trustees for a' course in manual arts in the
high school. It would come to a battle, but he would fight it and win It. He
wanted the money for a new teacher of history. People here did not value
history. The newspaper was all they wanted-yesterday was far enough
away, and only today was important. But how could man measure himself
if he did not know the history of his kind?

“I’H be along, Mary.” Then he remembered her and tossed her his old
mackinaw. “Here, put that around you.”

“But you?” she asked.

“I haven’t on a thin dress.” He saw her face for the moment framed
in the coat she put over her head like a hood. A prettyish girl, he thought,
too fine-featured, perhaps. At least among the sturdier girls of Median she
looked puny. He must think to notice how she ate. She was small, as their
mother had been small, but she must not grow up delicate.

He waited for her to be gone, then he rose, turned out the gas lamps
he had just had installed with all of Median beginning to use gas, and
strolled into sharply cold darkness. There was a smell in the air of frost-
bitten lawns and flowers, and it struck into his memory so sudden and
sharp that he recognized it instantly. This was the smell of the night years
ago when he had been dreaming of his marriage to Judy. But he had for-
gotten, surely he had forgotten by now.

Katie said, “Don’t raise the window yet, Jonathan. There’s somethin’
Fve got to talk about”

He hesitated, his hand on the window that had once been a quarrel
between him and Katie until he had removed it by simply refusing to sleep
in a room in which the window was not opened at night. Love of air
he had learned in England, and he was stifled unless he felt It fresh and
cold upon his face. “Jonathan ain’t happy without he’s sittin’ in a draught,”
Katie said so often that he had ceased to hear it.

“I’m fair tired tonight,” he remarked, but he sat down on the bed in-
stead of getting Into it. This room, meant for quiet and sleep, was In
reality the storm center of his life. It was the only room where he and
Katie were ever alone. Children, growing and gangling, noisy and clamor-
ous, trailed and galloped and lounged in every other.

He knew before she began what it was she wanted to talk about. It was
another battle in her long war against the school. Depending upon his

306

AMEEICAH TIIFTYCH,

mood and physical state, he was able to be quietly hoiBoroiis la his defeace,
parrylog and delaying, or- else he was' abrupt. He was^no^ sure tonight
which he would be. He watched her as .she slipped her . full cotton night-
gowE over her head. In ail these^ years .she had never undressed except
under this great convolution of white stuff. She was writhing, screwing her-
self out of garments underneath it now, and there were smaii clicks and
pulls of sound.

‘^Jonathan, Mrs. Tenberis awful mad again abo'iit that boy of hers not
passin’.*^

"Is she?’’ He suddenly .felt he would not be huinorous.

"She’s goin’ to complain to the trustees.”

"If!! do her no good. The boy’s a fool. I told her she ought to put
him to work in the machine shop or livery stable,”

"Jonathan, you didn’t!” There was a small crash of steel-stayed corset
about Ka.tie’s feet.

"I did.”

Katie stood an instant imagining Mrs, Tenber’s state of mind. "I reckon
she thinks if she pays taxes she has as good a right as anybody else to send
her boy to school.”

"Just because the country’s a democracy is no guarantee that none of
our citizens are ever born fools,” Jonathan retorted. He felt he w^anted to
be angry and he became so. He pulled the sandy moustache he had de-
, elded .to .grow last year. ■

"The trustees can’t realize it, either. Instead of facing the truth that
men may be bom free but they are never born equal, they propose to meet
the problem of fools like this Tenber boy by putting a machine shop and
a carpentry shop and what-not into my school. The town’s full of such
places, but, no, fools have to think they’re getting an education while they
are tinkering with their hands though they’ve got no brains.”

He was so angry now that he was chewdng the rough ends of his mous-
tache. "This isn’t just one boy, Katie, it’s a situation— a battle—and Fm going
to win or get out.”

"Then FI! be glad If you don’t win,” she retorted. "Schoolteachin’ is a
poor thankless business.”

"Teaching is the highest job a man can do,” Jonathan said firmly. "But
they don’t let me teach any more In these newfangled days. When I began
in the smd house I was aWe to teach. I could put my whole mind to it,
and I turned out sensible people from the raw ignorant boys and girls I
got Now Fm supposed to supply mechanics and carpenters and black-
smiths instead of scholars and civilized people.”

He rose and flung open the window, and the cold air hit him like a wave
of sea wafer. Upon such a night his mother had come home, and all his
life was changed. The wind had been cold that night. He turned to Katie.
"Here’s a promise, Kafle. If I can’t have the kind of school I want, I’ll
give it up.”

THE TOWNSMAN

307

‘^And take tlie stoteT' She was braiding her tight brown pigtail of hair.

",ABd take the store/’ he, said.

But he had no intention of letting it come to that. He was foil of stub-
born zest for his own way. He got into bed and lay very stiff and straight
as he summoned before the tribunal of his mind one after the other of
his school trustees.

Abram Hasty owned the mill now that old Samuel had died of apo-
plexy— a cunous way for that wire of a man to die, but his' veins were
petrified with the whisky he had drunk for years instead of water. Abram
had grown into a stolid pigheaded man who made a good thing out of
the mill by putting in machinery. But Abram still remained nevertheless
one of the stupidest of his pupils.

I can down him, Jonathan thought.

He ran his mind hastily over the others. Faience, the president of the
new little Median Farmers’ Bank; Riggs, the postmaster; Baker, the head
of the livery stable. Not an educated man among them, Jonathan thought
triumphantly. Not one who knows a Latin verb!

By his side Katie sniffed as she breathed. She suffered with hay fever
and, though the hard frost had cured its cause, she kept for months the
habit of sniffing.

hate your being at the beck and call of every taxpayer/’ she said.

‘‘Fm not,” Jonathan said flatly. He hated Katie’s sniffing, but not for
anything would he have mentioned it Instead he said suddenly and in-
explicably, *Tut up or shut up!”

‘"Why, Jonathan Goodliffe!” Katie cried.

“I say that no more for you than for me,” he retorted. And without
further explanation to her or to himself he turned his back on her and
went to sleep.

When Jonathan saw the hack stop in front of Ms house, he recognized
it as one of those that stood usually behind the railroad depot. Then he
saw his brother Jamie leap out of the hack and turn and put out his hand
to help a slender woman step down. They went into the house, and after
a moment Katie came out of the door, her apron over her head, and he
hurried from his office and met her halfway.

“Jamie’s brought his girl,” she cried. Hie wind twisted her skirts about
her thin legs and big feet.

“I didn’t know he had a girl,” he shouted against the wind.

308 AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“I reckon it’s only just happened!” she shrieked. "It's a Miss Bayne—
laEra!”

He caught the name like a blow and set his teeth. Evan’s sister, that
fierce child of a girl he had seen years ago! Yes, she would be grown
and not too young-older than Jamie. Buy why did she want Jamie? He
stepped into the little hall.

“Smooth down your hair,” Katie said. “You look wild.”

He smoothed it down hastily. . . . But would this marriage bring him
nearer to Evan? He did not want that.

“Howdy, Jonathan!”

Jamie was at the door of the sitting room. He was dressed in new city
clothes from head to foot. Jonathan surveyed him, delaying. “You’re look-
ing ve:ry fine, aren’t you?”

“Fve struck oil,” Jamie said, grinning. “A good deep well of it. Queer
thing Is* it ain’t a hundred feet from Ruth and Matthew’s cow pasture.
I bought next to them ”■

“They never struck any.”

“Not a drop. I’ve been all over their land myself. Ifs the dangdest thing
■! ever see,” ■

“Hmph.” Jonathan pulled his moustache. “Maybe the rest of you are
draking It of of them.”

“Maybe, but If we are, ifs all legal.” Jamie’s bold blue eyes were calm.
“Sure is bad luck for Ruth, I wisht it wasn’t my own sister.”

“Bad luck for anybody,” Jonathan said dryly. Then he heard the rustle
of a taffeta skirt and braced himself. Laura came to the door.

She put out her hand to him. “You don’t remember me.”

“Yes, I do.” He took a long slender hand into his for a second,

Jamie grinned. “Tisn’t only oil I struck.” He pulled her other long
slender hand into his arm and patted it, “Laura and me are going to be
married* Jonathan. Thafs what we came to tel! you.”

“I came to see Jonathan,” Laura protested, with her pout that was still
girlish enough to be pretty, “You made an impression once on a certain
young thing, Jonathan. She was smitten for a while with a grave young
Englishman— long enough to look twice at his brother.”

“Hey! Which one of us is the lucky man?” Jamie inquired loudly. He
was proud of her being a lady.

But he was proud of himself, too, these days. Lock was roaring around
Mm. Money was pouring Into Ms bank account, and Evan was talking of
making him a vice-president of Sunfiower, so that if he himself should be
elected governor, Jamie could take over the company.

“Come k and sit down,” Jonathan said. He was master of himself now,
and he led the way kto the sittkg room and nodded when Katie went
out to fetch coffee and cookies. “Well!” He looked from one face to the
other. “When’s It to be?”

For k this moment his mind had leaped ahead to their marriage day,

THE TOWNSmN

309 '

where he. SBd Judy must .meet. Not once had he yielded to any Imag.iiia*'
tion which would have made possible his seeing her again. .But that his
brother should marry Evan's', sister was beyond imagination*

“After Lent/' Laura said. “I have to go home and tell Mamma and
get my^ trousseau.”

“Your mother still living?” After Lent was a long time away, but. the
longer the better.

Laura gave a little scream of laughter. “Mamma would be furious if
.anybody thought .she was. dead!”

. Jamie shouted, and Jonathan smiled dryly. “Give her my respects,” he
said..

He had a strange wry tingling of Ihe blood at the relationship between
these two because somehow it brought closer the separate orbits of Ms
life and Judy’s. Then he , recognized this as the cause' of his secret excite-
ment and put it sternly away. Even if he met Judy face to face, what
could it mean to him? He turned abruptly to Jamie. “Tell me about Rutb,
Is she taking it hard that they don’t find oil?”

“Ruth feels it right smart,” Jamie said.

Laura was thinking, He’s so handsome, and when we’re married, I shall
teach him manners and I will throw away that suit he’s wearing. It was
patterned like a checkerboard. But he was growing handsomer every day*
The city was grooming him. She had taken him home and paraded him
before her friends, complacent when they chorused their admiration, “I
deciah, honey, he’s just beautiful!” “Laura, how did you—” “Laura, he
just makes my haid swirir

Her mother, ninety-one years old, had stared at Jamie for a long time.
“A very pretty man!” she declared at last. Her voice was silvery with age
and self-will.

Laura took out her fencing weapons. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” she
said., lightly. ■ ' '

“I suppose so,” old Mrs. Bayne said. She had blinked her old eyes once
or twice. “But what are you going to do with him when you’ve married
him, Laura?” She behaved as if Jamie sitting not ten feet from her were
cardboard.

“Keep him,” Laura said sharply.

“My child, you always were ambitious,” her mother had said. . . .

“I got the better of Mother,” Laura thought and gazing at Jamie, her
eyes grew liquid with love.

Jonathan caught that look and was as uneasy as though he were eaves-
dropping. “Excuse me,” he said. “Ill step out and help Katie.”

Neither of them noticed his going.

“Come over here by me, lamle,” Laura commanded. She still had to
tel! Mm when she wanted him to kiss her. He rose, shyly, very tall and
full of beauty, and came over to her and took her in his arms. She gave
herself up to the breathless luxury of giving herself up. “Love me?”

MB'

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

-'‘"Sure

you a oDe-womau maia> lamie?*'

He grinned down into ' her iace cn Ms breast “How do I know?''

“Your dad sounds an old rake.*'

He .Iaiigiied, and she dug her nails softly into bis neck. “Feel my claws?"

“Like a tiger cats!"

“111 dig them into you If you ever stop loving me!"

“ril remember that"

“Even when Fm an old .woman, and you're. still a haiidso.me young man,
youll have to love only me>--oh, Jamie, youll always be a handsome' young
man as long as you live, and that’s wh.at Fve g.ot to .face."

He laughed again, not knowing quite what else to do, and she w.renched
herself out of .fa..'is arms.

“,I wonder If Jonathan still loves Judy? I wonder if that’s.what is wrong
with. Judy? Even If she doesn’t love a.nybody, if he loves . her, . and ' .she
'ks.o.ws .it? Love is S'uch a poisonous thing when it goes on and on after
you want it to Stop! It poisoo.s lover and beloved." '

He had not the sligh'test idea what she was talking about, and she knew it.

■“Oh, well!” she said and threw herself into his arms again and closed
.her , eyes. He 'was male, bread to her heart and wine to her body. 'What
a curse to a woman was^ intelligence! How unnecessary and useless and
unwanted in the life of man and woman! At this moment of her passing
youth, It was the only life she wanted.

The door opened. Katie was back with the cookies and coffee. Behind
her came Jonathan, his eyes cold, Ms lips set. With Mm were his children.
He had brought them here to keep beside Mm, and when he sat down, he
held them in the circle of Ms arms.

. . , Weeks later Laura ordered Jonathan to come to her wedding.

He smiled faintly, “Well, Laura, Fm a very plain chap, and Evan’s a
great man now.”

“Nonsense! Evan doesn’t forget his old friends. There’s such a snobbish-
ness about men like you! You’re always thinking you’re too good for
people who are what you call ‘greatT’

Jonathan knew she was baiting him, but still there was truth in what
she said, and he was always confounded by any atom of truth.

“Maybe you’re right at that,” he agreed. He examined himself. “Reckon
maybe I do like plain people because I fee! good enough myself when
Fm amongst ’em.”

“Ah“hal” she cried, shaking her pointed foreinger at him.

“Leave it to you to drag out my Innards into the open air,” he said
good-naturedly. He liked Laura now and marveled at her folly In marrying
lamie. She read Dante in Italian, and he had never been able to persuade
Jamie to read anything.

*T haven’t inished,” she said impudently. And then she leaned forward

THE TOWNSMAN

311

and dragged out Ms heart and stared at it thumping and leaping iii' her
hand ■■■'' .

‘*You' do love Judy still/' ..she said. ■

'‘‘Reckon 111 always love Judy in a curious sort of way/' .he answered
in a low voice. Not to another soul than to tMs impetuous, clever woman
■could he have said it. But once the thing was in words, he felt relief. There
it was, out. His heart suddenly lay still in her hand. She took pity on. h.i.fii
and .put it iiea.tly into ' Ms breast again.

. ''Dear, Jonathan,” she murmured. "You needn't come to ' my wedding,
if it., hurts you.”

"TisMt the hurt,” he said. “It’s just—the uselessness of hurt. But ,FIl
come,”.' '

. . . That was it—the uselessness of even looking at Judy. And yet he
looked at her quietly and freely ail the time Jamie and Laura were being
married, and in all the city church full of people he saw only that beautiful
woman standing by Laura’s side. She was dressed In some sort of soft
stuff the color of cream, and she wore a big black hat against wMch her
pallor was pure beauty. He knew that all she wore cost a great deal of
money, more than he earned in a year; but for that he cared nothing. He
wanted simply to look at her, without memory of the past, without thought
of the future, without passion or possession. And as he gazed it came over
him that she was as much his life as she had ever been, "V^^atever she was
and was not, the mysterious form that the elements had taken to shape
her being was the one form that he loved or could ever love.

He became aware of the small sniffiings and twitches at his side that
were Katie’s sign of being, and he returned to his daily life.

“There’s a terrible draught!” she whispered.

He glanced about the church. “I can’t see where from. EverytMng’'s
shut tight.”

“I feel cold.”

He lifted her coat from the back of the pew and held it for her to put
on. At the same instant the wedding march burst into pealing music, and
the bridal party turned and paced down the aisle. The instant was near
wJien Judy must pass within very reach of his hand if he should put it
out. Surely she would see him. He felt sick and giddy. If she should look
at Mm? . . .

He kept Ms eyes on her approaching face. Her head was bent, but Just
before she reached his pew she lifted her head suddenly and gazed straight
ahead, seeing no one. He saw her face foreshortened and still so innocent,

So the moment passed. She did not see him. Light went with her, the
music faded, and people began to stir.

“Well, it’s over,” Katie said half-aloud. She wiggled her foot into the
new shoe she had slipped off. ' . ■ ,

“Yes, I reckon it is,” he agreed. “Let’s go home.”

He was very gentle with Katie that night She complained of headache

“You ca«*t go against the times/* Abram Hasty said. Then he added,
"‘sir.** Jonathan had all but beaten the word into him years ago.

It was the last meeting of the school year, and the question of manual
arts, long argued, always delayed, had come to crisis.

“YouYe such a practical mma, Goodliffe/* Faience said courteously.
Faience had come from Virginia. *T don’t know anybody the town owes
more to than you. Why, folks tell me you have started pretty nearly every-
thing we have thafs any good. But your attitude on the new education
astonishes me/*

**Fve been a schoolteacher long enough to know what you can educate

AMERICAN' TRIFTYCH

and cold, and he made some ginger tea and heated a brick. It occurred
to him as he put the.. brick: to her feet that she was very thin. It was so
seldom that he noticed such things that he was ashamed., now. ,

**Areii’t you all right, Katie?’* he asked.

’Course Fm all right,” she replied.

She looked away from him, .and. he said no more. Between. the.m. : the
primary silence had .never yet been broken. But that night he lay, long
awake, astonished at the passing of life. Katie, whose small adolescent
breasts had seemed. shocking to him so short a time, ago, this Katie had
been his wife for ail these years, and now she had reached the end of
youth. He thought of Judy, changed only to greater beauty. He put out
his hand and felt Katie’s shoulder blade through the yoke of her night-
gow.n.. At his touch she woke.

".Did you lock the kitchen door?” she asked.

They had never locked doors in Median until recently. But since the
panic In the East, panhandlers had come westward on freight trains and
on foot, and there had been robberies everywhere. Even in Median people
wtm' beginning to lock their doors. ■

■ "F think .1 did, but Fd better make sure.”

He climbed out of bed, fumbled for his carpet slippers, and lit the candle.
Upon the stairs a cold small wind folded his nightshirt about his bare legs.
The door must have blown open. He went on, shielding the candle with
his hand. A good thing he got up, he thought, for the door stood wide.
He peered out for a moment into the darkness. But there was nothing to
be seen except the trees in the square, ghostly In the corner street lamp.
When he had planted them they had been saplings. He shut the door and
locked it fast and went back to his bed.

THE TOWNSMAN

313

aad what you can’t/’ Jonathan said. “A schoolteacher’s job is to sort, and
sort more clearly as the grades go higher. Everybody ought to read and
write, well say-though I don’t know even that does everybody good. But,
not everybody ought to go on to higher mathematics and Latin,”

'‘Exactly/’ Faience said, "so the manual arts allow education to those
who shouldn’t. It gives the right emphasis to education in a great demo-
cratic country. It says to the common man, ‘The work you do with your
hands is as worthy of a graduating degree as is the learning of books/ ”

Jonathan put doggedly aside this river of words. Faience was the new
mayor of Median, and everything was practice for speeches the mayor
must make. "But manual arts are better taught where they’re really
practiced. Makin’ little useless things that don’t sell, that aren’t wanted,
that’s not education for anyone. It’s unreal”

"Still, seems as if fellows ought to have a chance at a diploma even
if they can’t memorize things outa books,” Abram Hasty said,

Jonathan turned a pale sand color. His eyes glittered, and his blood was
icy around his heart. Pure anger always made him cold. There was no
rise in the level of his voice.

"Very well, Til tell you what, gentlemen. I offer my resignation if there’s
to be carpentry and blacksmithing and basketry in the school It’d be dis-
honest of me to stay.”

"Now, Mr. Goodliffe,” Abram protested. He was a big, hairy, coarse-
fleshed man, but he had always been afraid of this slender, firm figure.
He had secrets in books that Abram could never learn. Even money had
not been enough to free Abram from distrust of the learning he bad not
been able to acquire or use. School for him and for Sam had only taught
them enough to make them afraid of an educated man.

Jonathan rose and pushed his chair under the desk. He held his head
high, and from under the sandy shelf of his eyebrows his eyes were agate-
colored and full of cold light.

"FlI withdraw, if you please, while you talk it over. Fli hsmd in my
resignation if it’s decided against my opinion as a schoolmaster. Good
day!”

He stalked out, his shoulders stiff, and so went across the lawn and into
his own house. In the quiet of midaftemoon in May it was empty. The
children were at school, and Katie was at the store. He stood a moment not
knowing what to do. Then he turned and went out again, down the street
and toward the store.

Upon the single main street of Median which ran into the square and
around It, a colored boy was selling newspapers. Jonathan stopped. It wiis
Parry’s youngest boy.

"Link, why aren’t you in school?”

The boy’s face was framed for impudence, but now he looked alarmed.
He shifted the papers under his arm and wet Ms full lips, "I just got to
earn me some money, Mr. Goodliffe.”

4 , AMEmcm TRIPTYCH

«What for?”

'^Circus comm®.”

Jonatliaii gazed at Mm- sternly.

*'Saf dy, siili.”

“You Icoow I oegM to puMsh you for taancyl

said at last, “aod keep the change.”

He gave the boy a dime and hastened on, shutting Ms ears' to thanks.
Circuses! So Median was big enough for circuses to find it, worth while to
stop. The town was getting too big—nearly six-: thousand people by the
last count He unfolded the paper as he went and came .face to face with
Evan upon the front page. -The smiling dark eyes looked at him from under
the handsome silver-gray hair. '“Evan Bayne for, Govemo,r,” the headl,kes
shouted. He stared at them. He. was 'neither sorry nor glad. AM that the
words meant was that Judy w-as going farther away. ,

No, Fm. danged glad, he thought

It separated him, sent him deeper into Median. Here in Median was

It a good store. He folded the paper and marched to the door of the store
and went in, seeing it for the first time as something possibly his own. It
was empty. He called, “Katie!”

on top of her head, “Jonathan! Why, whatTe you here for this time of
day? We’re taking Inventory—”

She looked tired, and his heart, quivering la his bosom, leaped to her.

,is

good and honest face, her plain figure and working hands—these were his
possession. His, too, her being, framed for loyalty and devotion and for-
getfulness of self. How could he ever repay her all he owed to her? He
knew. He held her reward in his hand.

clap. “Oh, I hope you didn’t do it for anything I said!”

“No. They’re going to pot carpentry and hlacksmithing and stuff like
that into my curriculum. That’s not school”

“Oh!” She sighed. Her hazel eyes were suffused. “If you knew how Fve
prayed!”

He had seen her by their bed every night, praying, her nightgowned
figure kneeling, her head bowed on the counterpane. The soles of her large
bare feet were repulsive and pathetic to him, but he always stopped any
noise he was making until she rose.

^ “Well, here’s your prayer answered,” he said. A faint smile was upon
his lips for a flickering swndL “Though Fve never thought of myself as
able to give the answer to any woman’s prayer!”

THE TOWNSMAN'

315.

She laughed because she knew he meant to joke.

might as well begin/’ he said, and went behind a counter. He might
just as well, for he had nothing else , to do. To Katie^ now he .paid his debt
In, ML

For the first time inhiS' life he put much thought upon the matter of'
his marriage. It could have notliing to do with love, for what people thought
of as love was certainly not between Mm and Katie. But other tMngs were.

There were the children. ,He had made up his mind that they were ot -
dinary children without- a glimmer of the flame that was in Beaumont.
But he did not blame them for that He had not found it in any other
child of the hundreds he had taught. And why should he think there was
any source of it in himself or in Katie? Judy might have transmitted it from
something Joel had. But others had not given it to Katie or to him.

Fm a common chap, he thought, and it would take something very un-
common to make my children anything else.

They were all the same, good and common. In church every Sunday
he saw Ruth and Matthew, faithfully worshiping God in spite of dis-
appointed hope. He had ceased to ask them whether they still had hope
of oil Matthew went on farming, and Ruth kept her house.

Once a year Maggie came home with George. In two years she had
had two cMldren, but they had not changed her. She was still impatient
and high-tempered, but George kept her in bounds. They were well ofi;,
although they took care not to talk about it before people, Maggie was
shrewd and a manager. She liked good clothes and good food, and she
had both. George had put off leaving the cattle business until Maggie
nagged him to it by complaining of the way he smelled. The crisis came
one night when she climbed out of their bed and flounced herself into the
spare room,

“And here I stay until you quit smelling like a farm hand,” she said.

George had got himself a job in insurance the next day, for he was
perpetually infatuated with the vigorous, plump-bodied, red-cheeked girl
he had made his wife. Now she wanted him to move East, and sooner or
later he knew he would do it, though he loved the West.

Yes, they were all good plain people.

Jonathan found that he even enjoyed the store once he knew it was his
fate. I*ve shopkeeping blood, he thought, remembering Ms mother’s small
and fragmentary shops. Not that I wouldn’t have enjoyed something else
more if I could have had it the way I wanted.

Denied that, he was cheerful, and he arranged ever3?thing the way he
liked, and this was pleasant. He asked no one anything, and that was good.
If he had none of the high moments of the spirit that once had been Ms
when he looked down into scores of young faces waiting for him to speak,
he had solid moments of content. He liked to search out the tMng he had
to fill a need. When someone came in to ask for anything he liked to say,

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

*1 have il/’ He liked to thiak he had everything k the store. To a woman
coming for a dress, a child for candy, a man for a .scythe, boys wanting
rubber to make stings. or' string for kites, he wanted' to, be. able to say,
have it here.^’ It w^as his ambition, to have in, the store what anybody
in Median could want and to have h before it wa,s ' asked for. He had
wire screening be,fore people thought of flies as anything but, inevitable,
or of any preventions for them except a, branch broken from a tree; and
waved over the dinner table. He had rubber hot-water bottles, and hot
bricks and warming pans slowly disappeared, from., homes in Median.,

At American House, Henry Drear was growing too fat to wa,l,k and
Mrs. Drear had colored men .in the ,kitchen , which she had made into a
new' dining room. Rows of rocking chairs stood, on the porch now, and
Henry Drear was always in one of them asleep. People passing Took for
granted his great body, hands folded across his belly, and head lolling o,n
his shoulder.

At night Jonathan locked the store and went home and talked over the
day with Katie. When he had been in the school there had been little to
talk about with her. But now there were the things she had known all her
life-the price of cloth and ribbon, the quality of carpets and the brands of
groceries, the colors of hats and curtains and the styles of dresses, the
quantities of furniture and underwear and overalls and shirts and haber-
dasheiy and hardware and the vegetables and baked goods that women
brought in to sell These home products were his bane, but Jonathan
wanted to sell food, and he could not refuse to' take eggs when a' womaH'
had no money to pay for a dress she .needed. , .', . . . ,

In all this Katie’s instinct was needle-fine and sure as money in his
pocket after a sale. She was- so average that she always knew what the
average wanted, and he trusted, to her completely when he ordered his
stocks, lliey disagreed on two things only— wallpaper and books. He dis-
liked wallpaper, but Katie said they must have it because it was coming
into style. People were building little bare frame houses that wanted paper
on the thin walls. So against his will he did his share to put upon Median
walls the large flowery patterns that offended his sense of decent quiet.

t*Stands to reason it’s silly to paste up sprawling ribbons and flowers
and scenes to stare at all day,” he told Ruth sternly when he found her
lingering over the table of wallpapers. He put it in the back of the shop,
and time and again he told people, ‘^You don’t want that stuff.” But they
did and so did Ruth, and at last he said, **Well, have your way in your own
home.” But in his own he had plain limed walls and was firm with Katie
except for the new parlor he put on the house that year.

There was no doubt that storekeeping paid Mm more money than teach-
ing. The only thing in the store that never paid at all was books. He kept
a small stock of them, old writers and new, on the chance that they might
be wanlttl. But they seldom were. Even Charles Dickens, whose stories
hm mother had loved so well, was dead upon his shelf k Median. Jonathan

THE TOWNSMAN

317

read a volume sometimes, snatching a few pages when on a rainy afternoon
the store was empty for an hour or so, but not in months did any other
hand than his touch those books. He kept them, wondering why he had
spent so much of his life in teaching people to read, and where they were

whom he had taught.

And so in this life he and Katie grew together. It was her life, and he
went into it. And the long unspoken friction between them was gone at
last. She was jealous of no one and nothing now, for she and he were
together in the store. She approved of him fundamentaUy at last, and he
found peace in this approval. It made him free. He had done something
he ought to do for her. He had done what she wanted him to do more
than ^ything else. And so, his love expiated, he found his marriage better
than it had ever been, a solid, everyday comradeship in which he and
Katie took common share of the sources of their money and food and
goods.

The store was a success and, because it was, it made all his life seem
successful. He put a bathroom into his house, though it did not occur to
him yet to take away the outdoor privy. But the women no longer used
it. It became private to him and to Jon. This was a relief, for it had always
been horrible to him to meet, coming to or from that small apartment,
Katie or Lula or Mary. He ignored them as though he had not seen them.
Now he merely ignored Jon, and he did not need to pretend to be examin-
ing the blight on the old lilac that screened the privy.

Median made a Chamber of Commerce the fourth year he had the
store, and he was its first president.

On an August day in a hot summer Jonathan sat in the office, it was
early afternoon, people were still loitering over noonday dinner, and the
store was empty for the moment of customers. The mixed odors were
strong, of pickles and cheese and dry goods, for he had ordered doors
and windows shut against the heat. Behind the counter old Cobb was
checking stacks of calico.

In the silence he heard the street door open and shut, and then Jon's
voice.

“Where’s Pop?” Jon demanded.

“Here!” Jonathan called. “And don’t you, call me Pop. It’s no way for
a boy to call his father.”

“Want me to sweep the store, Dad?”

31g ' AMERICAN TEIPTYCH .

Jonathan looked up from his ledger. He 'wore small steel-rimmed
spectacles to which he hadhtted himself from the gross or, two he kept
IE stock.

‘If yoii get dean behind the counters , better than you did last

“Didn’t i?”

‘‘Ho, you didn’t” Jonathan’s voice was kind but dry.

“Well, I wilt” Young Jonathan took the broom from the corner of the
oftlce and lingered. “Dad!”

“What, Ion?”

“Would you mind if I joined the Navy?”

Jonathan snatched off his spectacles. “What’re you talking of, boy?”

“Fm, sick of' this little town.”

Jonathan’s eyes were upon his son’s eyes, exactly like his own. “Why?”

“Everything’s alw.ays the same here.”

“No, it Isn’t. Every day is different. Fve been here over thirty years,
and no day has been like another. When I think of Median as I first saw
it when I was your age and now, it’s like a different world. Even the prairie
is different.”

“Everything’s the same to me.” Young Jon’s eyes were hostile, but they
did not drop before his father’s and Jonathan liked that,

“Where do you want to go?”

“Manila.”

. “Manila!” Jonathan cried.

Jonathan’s earth Manila had of late been a place well defined
because It stood for the chief cause of an inner discontent. He seldom
discussed politics. He had early discovered that men were as irrational
about politics as they were about religion, and he hated irrationality. But
of ail that he had disapproved in his time he most disapproved the push
west across the Pacific. “West, west,” he would mutter to himself, “as
though heaven were there!”

The Sandwich Isles he had considered the ultimate folly of a people
with already more land than they could conquer. Now these other islands
were being talked about.

“Whatever has Manila got to do with you?” he asked, his voice so chill
that young Jon longed to answer nothing. But he had the stubborn English
blood In him, too.

“Fd like to travel a bit,” he said quickly. “You came across the sea
when you was my age, Dad. But Fve only been to Topeka a couple of
limes.” ■ ■

Jonathan considered his son. He loved Mm, but the boy was not alto-
gether his own. Half of Mm was Katie’s, and he never forgot that. It was
a strange piteous thing for which he could not blame Ms children that he
knew still that he would have loved them better had Judy been their mother.
He was the more carefuEy just to them.

“Do you want the Navy or only to travel?” he inquired.

THE' TOWNSMAN

319 "

don’t ieel any real call to the Navy,” young Jon answered, consider-
ing. He suddenly noticed Ms bare feet and maneuvered the broom in front
of them. “Fm just tired of Median,”

“Tell you what FU do,”' Jonathan said. “FH give you a trip to Wash,
ington. FI! go with you. Fve' always wanted to see the capita! of this
country. That’s what you want to see— not some place on the other side,
of the world that’s none of our business as Americans.”

“Fd like Washington all right,” young Jon said cannily, “But 'what if
I still want to join the Navy when we get back?”

“You shall go,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be against my judgment, but, If
you’re going anyway Fd rather you went' with my yes than with my no.”

He was aware for the first time that this son of his had grown too
big for him to command. How strange it was that merely by passing of
days a small creature too helpless to feed itself should grow into a man!
In Ms mind’s eye he saw Jon always that little creature. But he was mis-
taken. Jon was a man in size and will His eye moved over the broad-
shouldered, brown-faced, sandy-haired boy. Then he saw his feet, and Jon
trembled. But instead of being angry Jonathan smiled.

“Here I was thinking how quick you’d grown into a man. But tliose
bare feet comfort me. You’re still a little boy, and In a way Fm glad.”

A scolding Jon would have taken and rebelled against it silently, but
this kindness undermined rebellion and made him furious. He began to
sweep the floor, his young mouth set. He was no child, and he would go
barefoot no more.

And Jonathan, not knowing that he had ended his son’s childhood,
went back to his neat rows of figures that by care and calculation showed
always a profit, a reasonable, righteous, earned profit.

He grew quietly excited throughout the next month about going to
Washington. He bade young Jon come to the store, and he fitted him to
a new blue suit and brown shoes, and himself to a new gray one. Out
of his stock he took two new suitcases, some socks and shirts, and two
ties. Secretly he was troubled by young Jon’s choice of the gayest design.
Left to himself, he would have stocked only ties of small and sober patterns,
but this Katie would not allow.

“Men have to have fancy ties,” she always said. “Don’t know why, but
Fa used to say a man always feels he can let himself go on Ms tie. So we
got to have all kinds on hand.”

Jonathan chose the quietest for himself. Without knowing he did, he
estimated the men of Median by their choice in ties. Faience he distrusted
because he liked flamboyance in ties. It was not suitable for the president
of a bank. He had often considered putting Ms account into the state bank
in Topeka.

That night before he and Jon went to Washington he Inquired of Katie

320

AMBEICAM TRIPTYCH

as they lay side by side in bed, “H.as Ion a kkk is ii,iin somewhere,, would
you say?*’

*What kmd of kii!.k?” Katie asked. .

^Wiidoess or something.”

'*Not as much as most boys, and you ought to know .it,” she retorted.
^‘When I see the way women worry over their sons .going, to poolrooms
and saloons, Fm thankful for our Ion.”

“Ah, well,” Jonathan said mildly*

They started to Washington on a September mon3i,Qg the day before the
opening of school. He had planned the time to be away because he could
never see the children crowd into the school without a quiver of his heart.
He had planted a quickly growing hedge between the house and the school,
and every day he walked around the square rather than pass the school-
house. But nothing could shut out the rising of their voices when in the
custom which he himself had set they sang, “My country, ’tis of thee . .
.After they had sung, he used to stand looking over the great roomful of
children, healthy and eager and restless. It had been the most exciting sight
Ms eyes could fall upon. And he had always said the same thing. “We
begin by singing our natio.Qal anthem. That is the way we should begin,
for America gives you this school. Boys and girls, America treats you the
same. America built this house and gives you books and hires teachers to
teach you how to learn and how to grow into good men and women.
Thafs all your country asks in return for all you are given—”

On the day school opened this year, he and Jon were on the train, rush-
ing eastward. He sat by one window and young Jon by another, and across
the space he talked to Jon of this country and for the first time of what
he could remember of England,

“A different fee! to it there, and when first J came here, Jon, I felt
Jet loose and lost, and I didn’t like It. In England everything was close
around you, and you knew where every path went. But when we first
came to Kansas there wasn’t so much as a path. Sky and earth, and wher-
ever you were it went on the same forever. Now Fm used to the size, and
I doubt I could go back to closeness. Fd feel it too tight, maybe.”

Young Ion listened politely. England was a name and no more.

When they reached Washington, Jonathan bought a guidebook at the
hotel desk and marked what must be seen, and at the end of each day
checked what they had seen. What effect the city had on his son he was
not able to tell* Young Jon’s sunburned face, always darker than Ms hair,
showed no change, But neither did Jonathan’s. Seen together, anyone
could have told that they were father and son, and could have told, too,
that they came from the West Their voices had contended against wind
and dust, and when they spoke their consonants were hard, as they must
be when human voica contend against the wind and call across distances.
Jonathan stfil carried the echoes of England in Ms speech, but Jon had
the plain Kansas burr. They talked of what they saw, without communicat-

THE TOWNSMAN

321

ing what they felt They walked miles over hard pavemeats md up. aad
down stone and, cement stairs and fioors and grew footsore as they had:
never been in their lives. They stared until they saw so much that nothing
had any meaning, and still they kept on going, buying their food hastily
wherever they happened to be and dropping into their cheap hotel beds'
at night too tired to speak. Jonathan had had ideas of teaching young
Ion something of history and government, but he was too busy to teach
or Jon to learn. They crammed the:ir minds through their eyes.'

They left Washington on a rainy night at midnight. Young Jon curled
himself upon a seat, but Jonathan could not sleep. He sat upright and
thinking.

He knew now that his was a great country. But he had known it in
Median. There was never a day when he walked down a Median street
and looked beyond it into the endless prairie that he did not know his
country great. Washington had showed him a great nation as well, a vast
civilized nation. Handsome buildings, great libraries and art galleries,
magnificent streets, embassies and hotels and gardens and parks, and at
the center of it, in a plain white house whose beauty was its plainness,
there sat a plain American. They had seen the President by the merest
chance on the day they went to visit the Senate. A heavy-set, square-faced
man in a frock coat had passed through the hall, his silk hat in Ms hand.
Whispering flew from mouth to mouth. “The President I” “Is that the
President?” “That’s the President.”

He and Jon had stood gaping like everyone else. Afterward Jon had
said, “He looks like anybody, don’t he, Dad?”

And Jonathan had answered, “That’s the glory of him.”

He went back to Median proud of all that he had seen. Yes, it was a
great country, and he was part of it. Men like him chose a common man
and bade him go to Washington and run the nation for them, and so long
as they willed, he obeyed them. When they willed, they sent him home
again, and he went back to some little place like Median and was no more
than anybody else. It was a glorious idealism, its only weakness the weak-
ness of the individual.

He talked about this to Katie the night he came home, without expecting
her to know what he was talking about, but having to talk.

“It was a beautiful sight, that city, but terrible, too. It made you take
thought who you sent there. Only the best is good enough. And how’ll we
find the best in a country as big as this and people living so far apart?
What is the test of a man when there’s no guidepost to where he is, no
class to define Mm, no standard of birth or race or religion to measure
him by? Is democracy too big?”

Katie waited for Mm respectfully. This was men’s talk and beyond
women. She wished young Jon could hear his father. It was so educational
when Jonathan talked like this. When she was sure he was through and not

322 ' . ' AMEEICAH TRiPTYCH . ,

going to say anytliiiig more, she remembered somethifig she had had on
her mind*

^‘The long underwear stock is kind, of low,' Jonathan. I wa,s pickin’ out
iwo new suits for you today, and I noticed we don’t have enough.’’

*‘ril order some to.morrow,” Jonathan said. He was back in Median.

But he kept his word to Jon. A year later Jon went to Ms father on a
Sunday after church, In that' empty pleasant hour after worship and befo,re
food. He had grown much In this year. There waS' no possibility of bare
feet now. He would have been more shocked than his fa,ther. .

On this Sunday, at this hour, Jonathan was walking among the trees in
the square. He made it his business to examine them and keep them sound.
He was searching down a borer in an elm when he saw Ms son coming
through the shadows. Jon had on Ms Sunday suit of dark blue, and he was
a sturdy fellow. Jonathan was proud of him and pretended not to see him.
Bad.” ■ '

son. That you?”

"Yep. What you doin’?”

' "Chasing a borer. Got him, too.”

Jonathan took out his pocket knife and opened a small winding tunnel.
Young Jon watched him hnd its end and dig out a fat white worm and
crush It .carefully.

"That’s the end of a nasty thing,” Jonathan said.

"Dad!”

The sound of Jon’s voice made Ms father wary. Something was about to
bC'-asked.'

"Yes, son?”

"Fd like to remind you of something you promised me.”

"If I promised, Fli keep to my word.”

"Remember you said I could join the Navy?”

Median rocked a little about Jonathan. The boy hadn’t forgotten!

"Yes, I remember.”

"I don’t want to join the Navy now, but I want to go away.”

Jonathan kept on walking and IcKJking at the trees, sharply aware of his
son at Ms side.

"I want you to be anything you want to be, Jon. Ifs the beauty of
America that a man can say that to Ms son. You don’t have to be a store-
keeper because I am one. It doesn’t matter what you’re bom. It doesn’t
even matter how much money Fve got. You can work up to anything.
Have you thought of that?”

"Fd like to get away from Median, Dad.”

"You can go anywhere you like to college.” There was a blight on a
chestnut, and he took a leaf apart to examine Its disease.

"I don’t want to go to school any more, Dad.”

■ THE TOWNSMAN . . , 323

, , Jonathaa' dropped the leaf. ^‘You don’t want' to go^ to schoolF^ he re-
peated. ''Why, I' never heard that before!”

"I didn’t want to tell yon, because you set such store by school,” Jon
confessed. He waswery red and afraid. .

“I can’t Imagiiie it,” Jonathan said slowly. "When I think how in Dent-
water I longed and ached and suffered for school— and here it’s free!”

Jon did not answer because he did not know how. Why was it that the'
old, in their youth, were so different from the- young? He waited.;

"If you don’t want any more schooling,” his father said, so- coldly that
he knew, he was angry, "I reckon it' doesn’t matter what yo.u do. A farmer,
a sailor, a blacksmith— ” .

Jonathan pulled his moustache. Common folk w^ere common folk. It was
the one weakness in the democratic idea which no one heeded.

"I want to go to Nevada,” Jon said. "Reckon I’ll go to the gold mines,”

"Go where you like,” he told his son shortly, and knew that it would
do Mm no good, whatever Katie had for Sunday dinner. He would not
be able to eat it.

The desolation he felt when he saw the train carrying his son to a new
West was broken before it was two days old. Clyde came back to Median.
Jonathan in the hurly-burly of a Saturday morning heard the news from
Mrs. Drear, running into the store with her apron about her head.

"Jonathan, you come over to the hotel quick. Jennet’s come back and
your old man!”

Everybody knew long ago the story of Jennet and Clyde, but no ques-
tions had been asked after Mrs. Drear had said flatly, "Fm thankful to
any man that’s put a wedding ring on Jennet’s finger.”

That it happened to be Clyde Goodiiffe was strange, but she was still
grateful. Besides, Clyde was now respectable in Median because he was
Jonathan’s father.

"Whatever!” Jonathan leaned across the counter to whisper, in his hand
a slab of cheese. "Fil be over. Is he all right?”

"Looks the picture of a hearty, wicked old man,” Mrs. Drear said and
laughed.

But Jonathan did not even smile. "Fil be over.” He filled a basket hastily
with packages and called to one of the twins who were now clerks in the
store.

"Joel Cany this out to Mrs. Johnson’s buggy!”

Then he hurried across to the hotel. His father had not written to him
in years. Twice a year he wrote out of duty, but he had long ceased to
expect answer. What news he had of his father was from Jamie, to whom
Jennet sometimes wrote. He went into the hall of American House, now
called a lobby, and to the bar made over into. a desk space. A young,
smooth-faced man stood there, Jonathan knew him as a boy he had taught
in fifth grade.

324

AMERICAN TRIPTl^CH

“Wliat room Ms my father, Hal?” . ,

‘The room o?er the kltchen-twenty-eight, it is.” ,

The rooms in .American House .had m recent years been numbered, but
more often than not they were still called by old iocation. '

lonathan mounted the stairs a.ed went down a. narrow carpeted aisle
and knocked at twenty-eight

*‘Come in!” Clyde roared.

He opened the door upon his .fa.t.her and Iean.et. They were sitting in
rocking chairs, each of them, :and a basket full of yellow oranges was .upon
the floor between them. Oranges were .beginning, to come In from Cali-
fornia, but they .were still luxury. Try as. he w^ouM to accept It,, he was
shocked by Jennet in his- father’s roo.m. An.d yet he saw at once that eve.ry
trace of girlishness had left her. She was a wom.aii of' middle age. What
had been willful on her face was changed into irmness; w^hat had been
wistful was gone; and what had been gay was now only humor.

“We!!, Jonathan.!” Clyde leaped to his feet and seized his son’s hand and
shook it And in that moment Jonathan saw’^ that his father had dyed his
hair and his moustache. They were blacker than they had ever been, and
he had cut of his beard, and under his chin his neck was corded. For the
first time in his life Jonathan saw his father’s chin. It was not at ail the
chin he expected. Instead of being bold and jutting beneath the bushy
beard, it was narrow and receded a little; and in this instant, beholding it,
Jonathan lost all fear of his father forever.

“Hello, Dad,” he said coolly, and to Jennet, not shaking her hand, “How
areyou?”^ ^ ■ ■ ■

But Jennet laughed, and her laughter was not changed. “You don’t hold
■ It agaiinst me that Fm your -stepmother?”

“Certainly not,” Jonathan said with all his dignity. But he knew he
would never forgive Ms father. Mary’s little ghost came creeping to his
side and stood looking with disdain at this red-haired woman in a golden-
brown taf eta suit, cut too tightly across her bosom and her thighs.

“You’re looking well,” Jonathan said to Ms father.

“Never was better,” Clyde said. He sat down and nodded at the oranges.
“Help yourself.”

“No, thanks,” Jonathan said. Then he asked, “Are you staying long?”

Clyde peeled the skin in strips from the ripe yellow flesh of an orange.
“The rest of time,” he said. “Jennet and me’ve sold out and put the money
In the bank. We made out well And we’ve come home to help out the old
folks.”

“You mean-”

“Pa and Ma need help,” Jennet said, “and Clyde and I are going to take
over American House.*’

“Ah?” Jonathan said. He was suddenly glad that young Jon was gone.
It would have been too hard on a decent boy to have this rakish old man

THE TOWNSMAN

325

for his grandfather. I needn’t stay long, he thought, there’ll be plenty of

time. '

But there was very little time, after all. For Clyde in his restless old
age after two weeks of Median decided suddenly to go back and see what

England was like now. ■

“There’s all' that money in the bank, and it’s now or never,” he said.

Jennet , was wiiiing because she was tired of him. But she was always
good-humored with this man who had made her a wife. '

, “Good idea,” she said, and saw to it that he set off with what he needed
In two neW' carpetbags.

He reached England. This they knew because Jennet had a letter which
Clyde told her to show to Jonathan to save him the trouble of writing
another. And Jonathan, reading it, saw for the first time how^ little educated
his father was. A child might have written these large, uneven penciled
words. There was neither spelling nor punctuation. But still Clyde made
himself plain. He was full of disgust because nothing was changed In Eng-
land. The only news was that Edward and Millie had six fine children,
to whom, it seemed, he preached the greatness of America until he had
them all discontented. He ended the letter with a smack on Jennet’s lips.
“A fond kis as you no wat I like my girl.”

Jonathan folded the letter abruptly on the words and banded it back to
Jennet across the same counter over which he had once sold her a red
dress, and she laughed.

“He’s having a wonderful time, but he always does, don’t he?”

“So it seems,” Jonathan said dryly.

And then they heard no more and months passed and Jennet had time
to turn American House over and over with paint and wallpaper and a
new quick lunch counter, and still there was nothing from Clyde. She
began coming over to the store every few days to ask Jonathan if she
ought to do something about Clyde, and then suddenly one day in January
Katie brought a letter to the store because it had an English stamp upon
it and an unknown handwriting. It was Edward’s handwriting. Jonathan
read it behind the meat counter. It was high enough to hide him, for he
had just this year put in ice refrigeration beneath the meat.

■Deak Bro. Jonathan:

I take my pen in hand to tell you the Sad news. Our father
passed away the sixth of December. Walking on the railroad
track. Thou^ we had warned him it is not safe as trains are fre-
quent here, but he was used to America and an unmanageable
old man. Said English trains was so slow he could ran faster than
them. He met his Sad end by a train and waS' mangled very bad*

We buried the reiuains in Dentwater churchyard. Old vicar Is
gone, but the new vicar did the burial nicely and Millie says fell
you everything was done*

'326

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

We are all well. Business' fair to good. We have four sons and
two girls &e eldest married and two boys in business. Millie sends
her best and so does ..

Your alf. , brother

' , Edward .

He handed the .letter to'Katie, and she read It., He met her eyes. '

*‘Dad would be the one. to- go back to E.!2glaQd and get himself buried
safe in Dentwater, churchyard,” he said bitterly. And he thought of Ms
mother and of her little grave here in . Median' .that he kept tended care-
fully. Now ail he .had done was not eno'ugk

going to pul .up a new tombstone for my ..mother,”, he told' Katie,
**one with an angel on It.”

He stood before the angel os his mother’s grave ,a few months later.
The angel was very nice, a pretty thing of Vermont marble. But he was
not excited by it. Indeed, he did not know what was the matter with him
this April. He had been 111 in March with a heavy bronchitis that left him
tired and thin, and had gone tMs morning to see the doctor. He had been
proud that he could go to a doctor in Median and had entirely pooh-
poohed Katie’s anxious suggestion at breakfast that he go to a doctor in
Topeka.,-',

*Tfs a pretty pass If a man doesn’t trust the doctor in his own town,” he
had exclaimed.

His temper was distinctly not as good as It used to be, and he knew it.
But there was no one la the house any more except women, Katie and
Mary and Lula, and being the only man gave him some privilege.

So he had listened to young Dr. Peter Hall, and he took pride in the
shining new offices. Very gravely he had breathed In and out under the
stethoscope and had allowed the young man to thump him soundly.

“You need a rest,” Peter Hall said affectionately. When he had first
come to Median he had been told to go and see Jonathan Goodliffe.

“No use your figurin’ to settle down here in Median wlthouten he likes
you,” the postmaster had chuckled.

“That’s so,” men had agreed. They were hanging about waiting for the
mail to come in.

“Rest!” Jonathan now exclaimed. “What from?”

“Well, sir, you’re sot as young as you were,” Peter hinted.

Jonathan did not answer this. Secretly he had been dismayed for some
time at the new feeling he had nowadays that life was passing and he had
nothing more ahead except one day after another. This feeling had returned
upon Mm heavily as he buttoned Ms clothes and waited for the prescription.

“A month off is what you need,” Peter Hall said.

“A month!” he had exclaimed. “Doin’ what?”

“Flay,” Peter had said smiling, “Indulge yourself, Mr. Goodliffe.”

Play! He had come out of the office feeling that he was sentenced.

THE TOWNSMAN

327

, : ‘‘Banged if I want to go home and look at Katie, though/* he muttered
into the warm spring' sunshine and was aghast at his wickedness. Remorse
.had led him here to the cemetery and the comfort, of looking at the new
angel on his mother’s grave.

“I would like to indulge myself/* he thought solemnly. '

,, But what would such indulgence be? Was there, really anythin,g more
that he wanted? Median had grown into a handsome town. It would be
easy enough now for the citizens to go on and put in what they wa.iited.
There was talk of a park and, a swimming pool. Some of the young fellows
had wanted ,a race' track but ..he had put his foot down, o'n that in town
meeting.' .

“Racing brings in a lot of trash/* he had declared. “I fought once against
Median’s being a cattle town for the same reason,” When he had inished,
what he had to say, the council had voted against a race track;

“Don’t know why I shouldn’t indulge myself a little/* he thought. “Fm
not needed any more like I was, I reckon.”

And then into his heart crept the old small serpent of desire. The angel
on his mother’s tombstone began it and the fragrance of the violets in
the grass at his feet went on with it,

“It’s Judy Fm still thinkin’ of,” he murmured. “Judy, my dear!”

Yes, this could be the only indulgence he craved, the delight of seeing
her again, of talking with her and perhaps holding her hand.

“ ’Tisn’t as if I’d want anything of her,” he thought. “Except to hear
from her own lips—”

Except to hear from her own lips why she had run away from him that
dreadful day, except to know if Evan treated her well, except to find out,
once and for all, how she was!

He lifted his face in the sunshine and closed his eyes and standing so,
with his hands clenched behind his back, he felt tears burn under his
eyelids,

“Fve lived mortally alone, Judy!” he murmured.

Then struck with fear lest someone had heard, or seen, he opened his
eyes and looked around. Nobody was near. The little cemetery lay, a place
of peace, beside the church and shielded from the street by trees. The
quiet graves were all his company. He wiped his eyes and felt better. His
heart loosened, as though something tight had slipped away from it.

“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t go to see my love just once,” he thought
“It wouldn’t hurt Katie if she didn’t know.”

But it was impossible to break in a day the habit of years. He would
have to get himself ready for it, thick about it for a few weeks perhaps,
dream of it, plan it.

“I shall just put Evan aside, too/* he thought He was walking slowly
homeward through the streets. It was noon and Katie would fret if he were
late to dinner. “And if Evan comes in,' why, FM just tell him the trutit

•328

A.MJERICAN tRIPTYCH

that ifs doe me after all these years, to hear her voice.” He lifted his
head as he fhos made up Ms; miad, and hastened. Ms step.

It was at this moment he heard Lola’s piercing voice shriek at him down
the street

'"Dad-Dad-where’ve you been? We cooldn’t find yon nowhere,!”

“Why, Lola girl—” he broke into a little trot to meet her.

*^Dad— Dad!” Lola, sobbed. ‘‘Mother’s fallen on the kitchen, floor!”

He hastened down the street, Lola’s hand., clinging to Ms,, and pressed her
with questions. But she knew nothing oi how it had happened. She had
been upstairs in her room, “reading with my e.ars stopped with my fingers
so I wouldn’t hear nobody call,” she sobbed remorsefully, and Mary had
come and pulled her shoulder.

“I heard somebody crash down, like, in the kitchen,” Mary had cried,

“We ran downstairs together and there Mother was lyin’,” Lula sobbed,
“and she don’t know anything.”

He dropped her hand, hurried to the back door and into the kitchen.
Katie lay on the floor, and Mary was kneeling beside her. She had, put a
cusMon under Katie’s head and an old afghan over her, but Katie knew
nothing of it. The dishes she had been carrying clean and ready to put
away lay smashed on the floor around her. Lula began picking them up,
still weeping.

But Jonathan stared in horror at Katie’s closed eyes, and at her thin
face, dark with blood.

.. “Wh,at In God’s name— ” he gasped .

He stooped and lifted her inert body, and her heavy hands fell like
weights to her side. He carried her into the sitting room and laid her on
■the couch., .' ^■''"

“Mary, telephone the doctor!” he flung over his shoulder.

Now he lifted Katie’s hand that had slipped from the couch and put it
on her breast. And then, because he could not bear the torture of her
gasping breath, he went into the kitchen and pumped a basin full of cool
winter and found a clean towel and came back and bathed her hot, dark
face. It was the most intimate service he had ever given her. The peculiar
Independence which was her being had taken its pride in doing everything
for herself as well as all she could for her family. Now, as he sponged her
forehead and her cheeks and wiped her twisted mouth, he felt awkward
and shy and touched to tears. Poor Katie, who never in her life before had
been .helpless! . .

“Dear wife,” he whispered. But she could not hear him now.

“My God,” Peter HaH exclaimed, “her blood pressure—”

His mouth clamped shut, and he began Ms examination. He knew the
signs so well These swift, hard-bitten, thin-bodied women, driving them-
selves under the whip of their own restless energy, intoxicating themselves
with their own ferment! He fond of Katie, and he liked the kindly

THE TOWNSMAN ' 329

lash of her tongue.. His own mother had been just such a woman, a prairie
woman, lean and hard and direct as the prairie wind.

. "Stroke,” he .muttered.

"You mean, shell be helpless?” Jonathan whispered.

"If she lives,” the doctor said..

He rose, and they stood looking at, Katie. Mary, standing behind them,
put her apron to her face and began to sob, and the doctor tomed.

“You*li have to take her ^ place, my girl. This womanll never work

"Then I know she’d rather die,”' Jonathan said
. "Yes, but maybe she can’t, after all,” the doctor replied, "and I doubt
shell ever so much as lift her own hand again.”

Jonathan’s mouth was dry. "Whatli I do?” he asked,

"Put her to bed and feed her, care for her, like she was a baby,” the
doctor said sadly. "It’s all a man can do except to wait and see what,
nerves and muscles may come back. Fli help you Ift her to her bed,”

He put his hand beneath Katie’s arms, and Jonathan took her stiff inert
feet, One of her slippers fell off. Only this morning he had seen her thrust
her feet into the carpet slippers she wore around the house in the morning
and had thought to himself that she needed a new pair, and he would give
them to her for Christmas. It was always hard to find things to give her.
She needed so little, and now she would not need even slippers. They laid
her on the bed.

"Mary can put on her nightgown, can’t you, Mary?” Peter Hall said.

Mary nodded, and they left her. Out in the sitting room they sat down.

"Did she never tell you she felt badly?” he asked.

"She never talked about herself to anybody,” Jonathan said faintly. He
felt himself trembling, and his throat was dry. He kept asking himself,
now what was he going to do? If Katie was going to be like this, what
would he do? What would any of them do without Katie?

The doctor coughed. "I ought to tell you, Mr. Goodiiffe, as your family
physician, that I’m afraid your married life is over.”

Jonathan stared at him, not comprehending. Then he understood and
blushed as he had not for years. "Th— that’s all right,” he muttered. "Th-”
that’s the least of it.”

"Well, I’m glad you take it that way,” the doctor said solemnly. "If s not
that way with most men. You’re a decent man, Mr. Goodiiffe.”

He wanted to tell the doctor that It wasn’t that he was decent-though I.
hope I am a decent man, he thought to himself in the silence. But how
could he say that what he had spoken was the truth and yet make the
doctor realize how good his marriage was and how fond he was of his
wife? Marriage was a manifold thing, he thought gravely, and in the variety
possible between man and woman he had been happy with Katie in his
way. By her conquering goodness Katie had made him content.

"It’s just that we had much more,”, he said firmly.

; V ^ AMERICAN TRIPTYCH '

Tbe doctor bowed hk head,,

*"you’ve had a real marriage^ Mr. Goodllffe/' he said.
^*'Mayhe I have/^ Jonathan replied.

iNigni ana aay, tomRiog ot a thoiisand small and sorrowful thkgs, Jo,n:a-
than watched beside this silent and inert woman. He moved' the couch In
from the sitting roomj and. on it he lay thiougli the long hours of the
night, listening for' the slightest m.o¥emeiit from the bed. But there was
no movement, only Katie’s breath, coming and going, catching, unsteady,
and ^ going on again. Sometim.es he rose, conscious of a change In the di-
rection of the endlessly blowing winds of spring' outside the house,
warmth and cold of the April air, and he cha.nged and adjusted the
over her according to the need of his i - - - ' -

and while he was alone with her he washed 'her facC' and hands
brushed her dry mouse-brown hair that bad a.: y:!

But the bathing of her body and the changing of her
to Mary and to Lula. He could

or in the
covering

own body, .In the morning he rose

and.

as yet no gray in It.

.. garments he, Mt

in her unconsciousness to see the
nakedness her painful burning modesty had always hidden from him. If
she had known, she w^ould have su&red because anyone must see her, but
even so he felt that she would choose the girls rather than him. So he
went Into the sitting room and w^aited and came back again and sat beside
her 'End waited.

She might be conscious again at any moment, the doctor had said. When
that moment came he must be there. He did not leave the house for an
instant Unwillingly even did he leave the room where she lay to answer a
knock on the door and the many inquiries of neighbors. Hour after hour
through the days and the nights he waited.

morning, the moment came,
sound of her louder breathing. He turned

terror of her awakening

in hi^ am “* together he bent and gathered her

m ms arms and held her.

Md da”? ^ ^ anything. I’m here. I’ll take care of you, night

haivS^?*^^ saying with the team streaming down his face and into her
ham that was against his bps, when suddenly she died.

A involuntarily at the clock on the mantel.

A Meteie was finished, and he felt it was his own.

The brief hour beside the angel on his mother’s tombstone was now
nothing but a dream* He thought of it sometimes and felt it as heavy upon
his conscience as an actual sin.

^Tf I hadn’t been dreaming In my own wdnd that morning Fd have been
at homes maybe^*’ he mused over and over again, driving remorse into
Mmseif until he felt himself bleed within. At least, he would have been at
the store where he could have been found. For an hour the girls had let
Katie lie, searching for him before they went for the doctor.

He had made sure Katie’s death was not caused by the delay. “Still,
that doesn’t excuse me,” he thought with gloom.

He knew what the sin was. He had been dreaming of Judy. Nothing else
would have delayed him. To have pursued the dream now was no longer
possible. It was over again, he told himself.

He went grimly back to his life in the store, and Mary and Lula kept
the house for him. He sat down at table with two women instead of three,
that was all. And he slept alone in his bed.

The summer dragged by, full of heat and drought. It was a year of
grasshoppers. Business was bad and he had much idle time. Without miss-
ing Katie he was lonely. Then in August he had a letter from Jon.

“Fm here, Dad, and I plan to settle in San Francisco, Got myself en-
gaged to a very fine girl, Isabel Dent, and we hope to marry next month.
Her father will give me a job in the railroad business.”

Jonathan wrote back with some bitterness. “Why shouldn’t you come
and help me in the store? You can have it, if you wish. Fm thinking of a
holiday,”-' ' ■ • ■ ■

He had not thought of a holiday, but as soon as he said it, he knew
he still wanted one. Jon wrote back promptly. “Wliy didn’t you say so
before, Dad? Sure we will come, if you’ll come to the wedding.”

But he did not want to go to the wedding. He was done with marriages
and lovemakkg. He wanted to go away alone.

“Where’ll you go, Dad?” Lula asked fearfully when he spoke of it.
She could not imagine this^house without him, nor the town. It was Im-
pending catastrophe.

He felt his Imaglnatioii grow reckless* He’d go as far as he could, away
from everything.

“Where do you want to go, Dad?” Lula pressed.

“Go?” he repeated, searching his heart for its longings. “Fm gok’ away
off-Fm going to England. And maybe FB never come back.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Oh, Dad!” Lula wailed. And across the table, Mary, his mother’s child,
looked at him with sad dark eyes.

But he shut his lips and gave them no promises. If he did not do what
he liked now, when would he? The image of Judy framed itself before his
eyes and he stared at it.

“Not you,” he thought, “not you!”

For he had begun thinking of her, to his shame, even at Katie’s funeral.
He had stood aloof in the midst of his family, solitary in his being. He
was free, and he was afraid of freedom.

I’ll have to get out of this, he had thought, looking down into Katie’s
grave. “Fm acting out of something that’s not the man I am. Fll go away
for a bit and get my own nature in hand again.”

It was then that he had thought suddenly of England. But there had
been delays, one after the other. Paul Graham came to Median as the rec-
tor of the new Episcopalian church. The churches in Median had been
built as Jonathan had forraeen. There were now four of them. But Jonathan
had grown more tolerant of men’s souls. “There is only one God,” he
had said to Paul one day, “but men do not know it yet. You’ll haU to
tell ’em, Paul.”

He liked the older Paul better even than he had liked the young mis-
sionary, and he made no objection when early in the autumn Paul told
him frankly he had come back to Median because he wanted to marry
Mary, and Ma^ wanted to stay here. Mary was long ready for marriage,
a fragile fair girl with his mother’s tenacity under her fragility. But tMs
wedding had been a cause for Jonathan’s delay. It was not decent to have
a marriage so soon after Katie’s death, and yet he was not wiUing, out of
his sense of duty to Mary’s mother, to go away without seeing with his
own eyes how happy she was with Paul. He had given Mary to Paul on
a February day at a quiet wedding in the small new rectory and had felt

the last duty to his mother finished.

It had been dfficult to arrange his own affairs. Martha Cobb and the
could manage in the store, and after some thought Jonathan had
mvited Matthew and Ruth to live in his house with Lula. It would do
Ruth good to come to Median away from that lonely, heartbreaking farm,
set like a dry island in the midst of a sea of rich oil.

But the real reason for his delay, month after month, after Mary’s mar-
nage had none of these things. Judy, only Judy had held him. And
yet he could not blame her, dear soul, since she knew nothing about it.

In May, only a month after Katie’s death, Laura had come to him. She
Md Jamie had been in New York at the time of the funeral. Evan had sent

came back to Topeka, Laura had come flying out to Median in a new

abS autoraoMe, with Jamie driving. They had been kind, too kind
about Katie, and Jonathan had soon wished them

TBBE TOWNSMAN , 333 ,

in one of her conimanding moods, had sent the others away, declaring that
she must and would speak to Jonathan alone.

He had dreaded what she might say about Katie, Instead, she had leaned
■forward in her low chair in which she sat and clasping her ringed hands
about her knee, she had said abruptly, “Jonathan, Judy Is most unhappy,”

He had given a startled cry. “Eh— is she?” He was ashamed of the cry
the moment it came hurtling out of his mouth.

“You still love her, God bless you,” Laura had exclaimed. ^'*Now, Jona-
than, yO'U must tel me what to do for her.”

He had sat motionless in his old Windsor chair, his eyes, upon Laura’s
pretty, painted face. She talked with Impetuous shrugs and rustlings of her
taffeta ruffles and .little fiwns and grimaces, her hands clasping and un-
clasping.

“Fm , furious mth Evan, Jonathan—but ifs realy that Rachel Power’s
fault. She’s inveigled Evan into making her his mistress. Ifs been going
on for years, so long that he doesn’t even deny it. They’re together al the
time in Ms office. Oh, dear— Mamma used to say when he first took that
woman into Ms office that it would end this way. Mamma said Nature
always took advantage of such a situation—”

“Wait!” Jonathan had commanded her. “You’re saying a serious thing.”

“Do you think I don’t know it?” she cried,

“Is there proof?” he had asked.

“Everybody knows—”

“Everybody doesn’t always really know,” he had insisted,

“You wait,” she had commanded him in return. “Don’t forget, Evan is
my brother. Fm not afraid of him. I asked Mm, and he wouldn’t deny
it. Do you know what he said? He shouted that he’d dare anyone to let
it make a difference in the way they treated Rachel. He’s simply going to
carry it off with Ms usual high hand, forcing her down all our throats as
his secretary.”

“What does that mean?” Jonathan asked, and his hands gripped the
sides of the Windsor chair.

“It means that Rachel wll stay in his office all day and go with him on
all Ms trips as his secretary and sit at Ms table in his house. And no one
can say a word, least of al Judy.”

“Why is she helpless?” he asked sternly.

“She seems to have no close friends, except me,” Laura replied,

“Has he been cruel to her?” he asked. He thought of Judy as he had
first known her, young, gay, at ease in the world, pouring her music Into
the old accordion.

“If you mean beating— no,” Laura said- “But Evan Is cruel He thinks
only of himself.”

“Many men do that,” Jonathan said. His Kps were tight, and his eyes
were pale and bright

Laura leaned forward again. Her small, intense face was burning. “Jona-

334

ameeican teiftych

than, of course men think only of themselYes* iamie’s a selfish man,-doE’t
1 know it? Blit there’s a place, where even Jamie has the sense to kn,ow he
has to think of me, for his own. sake. Well,. Evan hasn’t that sense. And
Judy can’t talk with him. Judy never talks with anybody. She’s like any-
thing lovely— she simply is/'

He quelled the rush in his heart “This-this other wo!iia.n.-”

^'Rachel Power-”

*'She’s different from Judy?”

"Different as night from day. She’s as selfish as Evan* sm, art enough to,
use her love. And he heeds' everything she says because she’s so smart.”

"Fll have to go and see Evan,” Jonathan said.

Laura laid her narrow hand on his.' "He’ll listen tO' nobody else, Jona-
than. 1 know my own brother. He’ll listen to you maybe because he’s never
confessed even to himself that once he injured you.”

He had not answ^ered this,' and he had drawn his hand gently away.

But Evan had not listened to him, either. When that brief, hard interview
over, Jonathan knew that he and Evan would never meet again. The
words they had spoken to one another were an end.

"I come to say something direct, Evan, for the sake of what’s past.”

"Say what you like, Jonathan.”

They were In .Evan’s, office. Rachel Power had been there, a tali, dark
handsome woman in severe clothes, and Evan had sent her away. She
had returned Jonathan’s look with quiet arrogance and then had closed the
door softly behind.

"Evan, I am told that Judy Is unhappy.”-

He had thrown this at Evan, and Evan had hid his surprise behind a
quick smile. He tilled hack in Ms chair. "Now where did you hear that?”

Evan was successfully rich, but the signs of disappointment were upon
him. His handsome eyes had hardened and his lips sneered through the
smiles. He had run twice for governor and had been defeated, the first
time by the Populists, and the second time no one quite knew why. He
had flung away politics then and had devoted himself to making money.
Now he held the reins of half a dozen utilities and industries in Ms hands.

He’s like a man with a lot of horses tearing away and nowhere to go,
Jonathan had thought shrewdly, looking at him.

"Don’t matter how I heard,” he had said aloud. "Ifs this I want to
say: What’s gone Is over. I’ve had my life and Fm content. I’m goln’ to
England now.”

"To stay?” Evan broke In.

"Maybe,” Jonathan said. "So, Evan, I want you to remember you owe
It to me— to-to keep Judy happy. That’s all”

Evan sat stIlL "l%y, damn you, Jonathan,” he said slowly. "I don’t owe
you anything,” He rose and leaned over the desk on Ms hands. "I owe no
man anything-nor any woman!”

THE TOWNSMAN

335

loaathaii rose, too, a slight medium figure in his new pepper-and-salt
suit., ‘When you marry a woman you take on a debt,'E?aii-if you*re,.a
.man.”' ,

“Judy has had everything she wanted,” Evan said. '

“You can’t be sure of that until heath do you part,” Joaatbm. said
gravely and took up Ms. black felt hat and went away.

,He came down early one mormng a year later to make his own break-
fast. Since Katie’s death he found himself in the habit, of waking j'ost be-
fore dawn. He lay usually until daylight, listening to the twitter of birds
in the ivy that climbed about his window. When the day silenced them,, he
rose, washed, and dressed and went down. It was six o’clock and he heard
Bill Hasty, Abram’s boy, throw the morning newspaper on the porch and
go wMstling on Ms way. He opened the door and reached for the paper.
The wind had unfolded it and great black letters leaped at him, EVAN
BAYNE KILLED BY WIFE’S INSANE FATHER. He gripped the paper
in two hands and stood staring at the news, and the cool autumn wind blew
his thinning hair.

In an instant he had it all as clearly in his mind as though he had been
there. Old Joel had been sent home from Honolulu to his daughter. He had
been found wandering on the streets, a beggar. Joel had been in Judy’s
house less than a week and yesterday he had walked into Evan’s office,
had shot him and killed him instantly.

Jonathan took the paper into the house and burned it in the kitchen
stove. Then forgetting he had not eaten he went upstairs and put on his
best suit and told Lula to get up.

“I’m going in to Topeka,” he said. ‘T don’t know when Fli be back.
Evan Bayne is dead.”

, . . The black butler opened the door but Laura was there Instantly,
rustling out of the drawing room in her black taffeta.

“Oh, Jonathan, how I prayed you would cornel”

“Where’s Jamie?” he asked stolidly.

“At the office, looking after things. Jonathan, it’s so terrible.” She
seized Ms hand and pulled him in to the drawing room. “Sit down-let me
tell you. It all happened in a minute, I can’t get Judy to move. She just
sits there in her music room staring at her hands.” She glanced at a closed
door, “And her poor old fatber-^razy as a loon. They have him In a
padded ceil in the hospital, waiting trial.”

“They’ll never prosecute,” Jonathan said.

“How can they?” she cried back. “He’s just an old ghost And he keeps
telling everybody God made him do it. Nobody even knew he was In the
building. He just walked into Evan’s office.”

“Nobody with Evan?”

3 : 36 ,.

AMEEICAH' TRIPTYCH ,,

"‘That RacM Power, of course. She says he tried to shoot her, .too.
But she grabbed Mm—fae^s so weak and old.”

He did not speak. He was llsteomg beyond Laura’s voice, .She saw it
and said, ^'Dear Jonathan, you want to see Judy,” ■*.'

"'No, better not,” he said indistinctly.

‘"I will send her to you,” she s.aid and went away.

And in the next moment the door opened. He s.aw Judy, standing there
In her soft fuli black skirt “I knew you would come, Jonathan^® she said.

"Of course,” he said and took her hands. They were as soft as ever, and
crushed so easlly-how he remembered!

"I didn't want to go away, Jonathan, because I. knew you .would come
as soon as you could.”

They sat down on a satin couch, and he went on^ holding her hands.

“Poor Papa,” she said gently, "He thought he was doing right. You
know how he is, Jonathan, He told me over and over, T did God’s will,
Judy, and God helped me,’ He was so pleased with himself, poor Papa.
They won’t kill him, will, they, Jonathan?”

"No, Indy.” She was so beautiful in Ms eyes, so frighteningly beautiful!
Her lovely bright hair, shining about the black frock, her creamy skin and
the dark sweetly lashed eyes! ■

"And you, my darling dear,” ^ he. said with unutterable tenderness, "how
are you bearing it?” He had her hands at his breast, fondling the,m, kissing
them. He could not help it, after all these years. And she did not pull her
hands away nor turn her eyes from Ms face. But large clear tears came
rolling down her pale cheeks. "I loved Evan so,” she said. "It never mat-
tered w.h.at he did—I loved Mm.” ■

She spoke with such innocent honesty that he felt Ms blood stop. He
put her hands down gently on her knees,

"DM you, Judy?” His voice sounded small and weak In his ears, "Then,
how can I help you, my dear?”

She gave a sob and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Oh, be my
frieod—please, Jonathan!” He longed to put Ms arm about her, but he sat
rigi.d..;''- ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

"That I will, Judy, always. Count me for that, my dear,” he said and
forced false cheerfulness into Ms voice.

And she lifted her head and wiped her eyes, and he sat rigid while she
talked softly, sobbing now and then, "They sent poor Papa back from
Honolulu, Jonathan, They sent him back because he was destitute. He was
begging in the streets, they said— begging and preaching. Jonathan, I want
him to come here and live with me, and Fli look after him, I haven’t any-
thing else to do, now.”

"We’i! have to see, my dear,” he said. His voice was trembling again,
but he mastered it. "Ifl depend on others, I fancy-not on you and me.”

Distress flushed her sweet pale cheeks. "But, Jonathan, you tel! them,”

THE TOWNSMAN

337 '

will, my dear,” he promised and soddeniy cooid bear' no more,, ^'ril
go now, Judy, and see your father and find out how things are.”

‘^Oh, thank you, Jonathan. I ieel safe again, now you’re here.” She
dried her tears with a wlsp^ of^ lace and muslin she took from her belt, '

,He went away without touching her hand but she did not notice this,
and seeing her absent eyes when he said good-by he felt a shock that
chilled his heart. The brief .flame kindling out of the old, smouldering fire
of his love died suddenly to its .final ashes. He knew., in the instant he
closed the door, that she hadmever loved ^ him. !!■ she .had loved him even
when he' was young, she would have come into the sod house, with him
In, the days of his' grief, and she would have stayed with him. ■

As Katie did,” he muttered bleakly.

Instead she had run away with Evan and ail these years she had been
Evan’s wife. Today when Evan was dead, even when It was plain that
Evan had ceased to love her, she still had no thought for him whom she
had left so lonely long ago.

'‘Though Fve loved her faithfully,” he thought with stark bitterness.

No, Judy had come to him even today counting with simple unthinking
selfishness upon the faithfulness of Ms love. But he understood now that
she had thought only of herself. Well, he would help her and go away.

‘Tm cured, I hope,” he thought

But he felt a wound within him, a bottomless loss, a grief for something
that never was except inside bis dreams.

"Best to know,” he told himself.

He buttoned his coat and plodded down the street to fulfiJi his last
promise to her.

At the city hospital he asked to see Joel. "Fm a friend of Evan Bayne’s,
and Mrs. Bayne asked me to come,” he said simply.

A male nurse led him into a barred room, and there old Joel sat bolt
upright in a wooden chair in the middle of it. He lifted his head at the
sound of the door and rose when Jonathan came in and stood tali and
spare in his rusty black suit, taller than Jonathan remembered him, his
white hair hanging to his shoulders.

"You don’t remember me?” Jonathan asked.

"I do not, I am sorry to say,” Joel replied in a resonant strong voice.
The bright mad eyes did not look at him. “Are you sent to me from the
Lord?”

Jonathan smiled. “Perhaps I am,” he said. “Fm Jonathan Goodliffc. I
was a lad in Median when you came there to preach, years ago.”

“The Lord sent me there,” Joel declared with energy. “The Lord has
sent me to many places.” He stood towering over lonatban, his eyes fixed
on space above his head.

“And the Lord told you to kill Evan Bayne?” Jonathan asked quietly^.

The vague blue eyes glittered, wavered, and fell to Jonathan’s face. Joel
put up one hand and clutched his hair. His hand, thin and fine as a shell, ■

338

Aumacm triptych

was crusted with dirt* ‘‘The’ man wouldn’t let me see Judy— he wouldn’t
even tell me where Judy wasd* Joel’s voice was suddenly weak and childish
and all the resonance was gone. “I was coming home to be with Judy,
and the man behind the desk said, ‘Pot the old fool in the asylum.’ ”

*‘And what did you do,' Mr. ..Spender?” Jonathan asked. His voice was
Cfuiet and kind, and Joel answered at once.

hastened out of that room, and the woman outside the door put a
pistol Into my hand, and I listened to the voice of the Lord.”

*‘What did the Lord say?” Jonathan asked.

'*She said, ‘Go and kill that man!’ ”

Joel drew himself up to his full height and thrust out his hands as though
in iovocatioo. “Blessed be the name of the Lord!” he shouted,

“Mr. Spender, sit down and rest, sir,” Jonathan said, “I will try to take
.you to Judy.”

Obediently as a child the old man sat down. Jonathan took this strange
conversation to the nearest police station, and in less than half an hour
he stood listening, with a police officer, to the dark handsome woman
locked behind the mahogany doors of Evan’s office.

“He wouldn’t marry me,” she said sullenly, in her deep and strange
voice. “He loved me, but he wouldn’t marry me. He said it would ruin
him if he divorced his wife and married me. People wouldn’t trust a
divorced man with their money. He said I had to go on as we were. He
made me sit at his table, obey him, work for him. He used me like a
servant. Fd bought that pistol weeks before. that crazy old man

came out talking about God-I took the chance.”

“Take her to headquarters,” the officer commanded his men.

So Evan’s life had ended, a bitter frustrated history, Jonathan told him-
self sadly. But he thought most of Judy.

I can understand, my poor dear, he told himself. .In some queer way,
I still love him, too.

But he made op Ms mind to go to England at once.

The ship ground against the wharf, and the gangplank was fiung down,
and people pushed ahead of Mm. It was the habit of Ms whole life to let
them pa.ss him and go on. Then, as he was about to move forward, he
felt his shoulders strongly grasped and held.

He looked up astonished and saw looming above him a tall, dark-faced
man and knew him instantly.

“Beaumont!” he gasped. “However?”

“Mother told me to meet you, sir, and here I am. This is my wife,
Michelle.”

He felt his hand taken between two soft ones, he smelled a delicate
perfume, and a woman’s pretQr face under a little lace hat leaned forward
impetuously and kissed Ms cheek.

“Ah, Mr, Gcwdliffe, you who are so good— now I can see you!” Her

THE. TOWNSMAN ■ ' ' 339

warm woman’s voice, spoke witk an enchanting accent .He was '.loo,, be-
wildered with surprise and pleasure to speak.

The more he, looked at them, the more shy he was. They were so heautl-
M,, their garments rich, their faces happy with the careless happiness of
those who have no secret cares of their own. They, took his arms . and
bore him away between them; and a porter, unseen until now, seized Ms
bags. Protesting and pleased, together, he was carried off to a hotel which,
he saw' from the very flunkeys at the door was an expensive one,

“1 say,” he remonstrated, “I can’t stay here, Beaumont, Ifs not my kind
of, a place'.”

“You’re our guest,”. Beaumont cried with .joy* “To, think. I have the
chance!”

They swept him along with them into an enormous mahogany-lined
lift and then along wide halls into a suite of rooms facing the sea. Beau-
mont threw open the door of a huge bedroom, and the bellboy put his
bags down, and Beaumont gave him a tip from which Jonathan averted
his. eyes.

“Well have lunch in twenty minutes,” Beaumont announced, “and well
wait for you in the parlor. We have everything to talk about— not a moment
must be wasted, mon cAer/”

Jonathan understood not one word of the French into which these two
fcE as naturally as they breathed, but he understood them. He had never
seen two such glorious creatures. In the cab he had sat between them,
looking from one face to the other, silent while they poured out talk, and
thinking that Beaumont had fulfilled his whole promise as he could have
done only in the air of a country where he was free as France could make
him free. Jonathan thought with sorrowful contrast of Stephen and Sue in
Median, living out their lives humbly under the shadow. But upon Beau-
mont no shadow had fallen.

I got him out in time, Jonathan thought with thankfulness.

And Michelle had dispelled even the chances of memory. She was a
lovely creature, her auburn hair curled about her pretty vivid face and
her violet eyes dancing and gleaming with light. The love between her and
Beaumont was open, and neither thought of hiding It.

He stood alone in the huge bedroom and caught a sudden sight of him-
self in a great panel mirror behind the door. He had never seen himself
from head to foot all at once, and he was startled and abashed. What did
that brilliant pair see in this middle-sized, common-looking chap that was
he? He turned away from himself and tiptoed about the room. Everything
in it was big and solid, nothing was makeshift On this little isle people
built to last for eternity. Centuries could not destroy such stuff. He thought
of the makeshifts of Kansas, the quick wooden buildings thrown up in a
few days, the shoddy furniture of mail-order catalogues.

Ifs because America is so big that folk can -always move somewhere
else, he thought Here they know they’ve got to stay.

MCI

AMEmCAH TEiPTYCH

Beyond the bedroom; was a hatbroom so Immease that he was struck
with admiration. Even America had no such bathroom. , The tub , was
enormous, built upon the ioor like a" monuineEt, the plumbing massive
and too firm to admit of Improvement. This bathroom would endure as
it had been installed, let kvention be what it might

He inspected everything, gazed out of the window, and then inexplicably
changed his tie. He had put on a plain gray silk tie' in the ship’s' cabin
this morning. Now he took it off and put on the^ gayest one he had, a
narrow maroon satin stripe. Then he opened the door Into the other room
and stood there smiling at them with love in Ms heart.

An hour later, in the great .orderly hotel dining, room, he told . himself
that this could never have happened in America. He had hesitated half-
fearfully at the dining-room door, between Beaumont and Michelle. Beau*
mont looked prosperous and proud, a man obviously of the upper classes.
But there was no need for hesitation. The steward had hastened forward.

"Yes, sir— Dr. Parry, please, your table is r^erved,’'^

They had followed him and seated themselves at a table where a high
window gave toward the sea, an.d he had eaten the best meal of his life,
English food, roast beef from a hot service wheeled to the table and
carved by a white-capped, white-aproned cook— Yorkshire pudding and
gravy, mashed potatoes and boiled cabbage, a green salad and plum tart.
His heart was warm toward this country of his ancestors. He felt founda-
tions firm under Mm. People knew where they were. Every man had Ms
pkce.':"'

And ail the time he listened to this pair. They made a duet, wanting to
tell Mm everything at once. Yet he could scarcely listen for looking at

them.". ' ■■ ' ■ " ■ ■

"I wish your mother could see you, Beaumont,” he interposed,

"I wish we could see her,” Beaumont said eagerly. "We’ve thought
often of going back to America, just for a visit. Fm still an American. We
think of that often, eh, Michelle?”

"How often!” Michelle echoed. "I long to see my dear good belie mire
and my good beau pire and the brothers and sisters. Gem— it is such a
sweet name!”

"We wfll talk of it later,” Jonathan said quietly.

They did talk of it later, but he had first to hear of Beaumont’s great
achievements m a surgeon of the hospital where "he reigns supreme,”
Michelle said proudly. She put her wMte hand on Jonathan’s arm. "I must
tel! you what he will not— that he is a vairy great surgeon. Oh, people
come from everyw’ere— only for the brain, you know. Last monf a prince
from India, dying of the tumore, and my Beau cut it away and mended
the brain again, and the prince ^ows well If he liked, my Beau could
be a great musician, but he chooses to do what helps so many people!”

Beaumont laughed, bis white teeth shining in Ms dark face, and his dark
eyes tender upon his wife.

THE TOWNSMAN

. “It is my tom, Michelle, ” he sald, aad thea he toM loBathao in a few
deep words what Michelle had meant to him.

“We loved each other so soon after I came,” he said, “How it would
have been for me without her I cannot imagine. She was my home, my
love, my security, my refuge. She comforted' me when I was discouraged,
praised me, scolded me, I was not lowly or alone because of herl'^
'Michelle’s eyes were wet. “.And was it nothing for me to have you, too,
.all those years?” she said.

in the presence of this love Jonathan’s heart began to- bleed from the
old heart wound. .Ah, he had always known that love was like this, even if
it could not be for him. “I thank you, my dear,” he said gently to Michelle.
“And you, Beaumont— you’ve grown to your height, my son,”

Yes, this great brown fellow was Ms son, the son of Ms spirit He looked
at the big, dexterous, life-saving hands. “You must never come back to
America, Beaumont,” he said slowly. “Never-never.”

Beaumonfs face quivered. “Is America the same?”

Michelle was suddenly quiet. Her luminous eyes moved from one face to
the other. Ah, these two, Jonathan thought, so happy, so rich m one an-
other, they knew the shadow over there across the sea! They did not live in
it, they were free; but they knew it was in the world with them,
“America has not changed in her heart,” Jonathan said in Ms quiet sad
fashion. “The body has grown. How the body grows! You would never
know Median, Beaumont. The courthouse, the churches, the post office, the
fine school— Fm not the schoolmaster now, you know—”

“I can’t imagine you not a schoolmaster,” Beaumont said. The tender-
ness in his deep, gentle voice broke over Jonathan’s heart,

“I tend the store now,” he said. “But I daresay your mother’s kept you
up in Median news.”

“Yes,” 'Beaumont said simply. .

They were still thinking of the shadow over there. In silence Beaumont
leaned forward, Ms hands hung between Ms knees, his head drooped. It
was an attitude of unconscious memory, the memory of Stephen, his step-
father, and of Sue his mother.

“If America doesn’t change,” he said—with sombemess— “If her heart
doesn’t grow to comprehend the brotherhood of man, she’ll be torn in two
when the big war comes.”

“The big war?” Jonathan repeated blankly. He had not thought of war
for years. That minor splash in the Pacific had been soon over, and
Admiral Dewey had come home to be made into a hero of clay and then
broken into dust again by a childish people,

“There’ll be lesser wars first,” Beaumont said His voice was the
prophetic tolling of a bel, “There’ll be a warm Europe in the next five
years, but ifll be a lesser war. Maybe there’ll be a couple of wars like that
But tile big war Is coming, the war for the biotherhood of man.” ^

342

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He haci dropped back into the speech of Ms chiidhoocl. Michelle: looked
Mgliteiied. ‘'Beau, what are you saylug!” she cried. ,,

Beaumont shook Ms .great head, “No, we won’t gO' to .America,, you and
I, Michelle. Wei! live in the sunshine of France. But ,Fli never see, my
mother again/’

They stayed together four days, talking a little less each day but feeling
closer together. In, the evenings Beaumont went to the. piano and played,
and sometimes while he played he threw back his, head and sang. When
the great rolling voice po-ured into ..the room,' Michelle slipped her hand
Into Jonathan’s and squeezed it . “You see why I adore'him,*^ she whispered,
and Jonathan nodded. Most of these songs he had never heard, but some-
times, a few times, Beaumont sang the slave songs of Ms childhood, and
tears came into Jonathan’s eyes. Ah, Beaumont must never come back!

On the morning of the fifth day Beaumont was summoned to Paris by
cable. The on,Iy son of a cabinet minister had been caught in a motor
accident, and Ms skull was crushed. There could be no delay.

“Come home with' us, sir,” he begged Jonathan, and Michelle’s , soft
hands clasping Jonathan’s pulled Mm toward France.

But Jonathan refused. “No, I cam,e back to see England, and it was
rare luck to be met by you and Michelle. Ill never forget these,, days.
In a way, they’re better than any of my life.”

“We’M meet again,” Beaumont said.

Jonathan smiled and did not say what he knew, that such meeting could
not be sure. Once In a lifetime it was lucky enough.

It was not many days before' he knew he did not want to stay in England.
He found no such companionsMp again as Beaumont and Michelle had
given him. The great hotel was too fine for him left alone. He took the
train to Blackpool and was. met ' at the station by Edward and Ms two
eldest sons. He saw the three medium-sized, soberly clad figures and knew
them at once. Edward had settled into thickishness at the waist, and his
long gray moustache was yellow at the fringes.

“Well, Jonathan,” Edward said, and they clasped hands.

“Well, Edward,” Jonathan repHed.

“This is Tom, my eldest, and tMs is Ed.” Edward pointed his stick at
his two sons.

“Fine lads,” Jonathan said heartily.

THE TOWNSMAN ; . 343

The, mea took Ms bags, and the brothers walked ahead. '‘Well take a cab
for Edward said

"Don*! for me,” Jooathaa. replied.

Blit' they crowded Into a cab and rattled off and stopped in front of
the store. Nothing was^ changed. Jonathan knew the rooms as ■ soon as he
stepped into them, and knew Millie, too, stout and -middle-aged as she was.
The younger boys were apprenticed at shops, but the house still seemed full
of Edward’s cMIdren.

But after the first day it was hard to talk. Edward and Millie talked
whie. he listened, and he saw the picture of their lives-the petty troubles
with rival shops, the competition of too many people -trying to earn their
bread In the same spot, the careful watching of tiny profits. It was a decent
life, but how small! His own life in Median, he now saw, had been filled
with' Immensities.

Of that life, to' his amazement, they asked no questions. When he spoke
of it, Edward lit Ms pipe and let his mind wander and Millie said, ‘Well,
I never,” her eye on her knitting.

Once she stared at him and when he paused she broke in, “Jonathan,;
remember Connie Favor?”

Jonathan blushed against his will “Yes, I do~just.”

Millie smiled. “S'he was sweet on you-she’d have gone to America for
the asking.”

“I was only a lad,” Jonathan said stiffly.

Millie laughed. “Ah, well, she married a chap as went to Australia— lives
on a sheep farm now.”

He gave up taiking of Median after that, and in a few days he had had
enough.

England was small, too small for him, and he knew he did not want to
stay in it. All against his will America had stretched his soul. He thought
much of Median, in the narrow streets of Blackpool, and he longed for
the wide plains and wider skies of Kansas. There’s room to grow 'there, he
thought.

On his second Sunday he tramped off to Dentwater. “Don’t expect me
until you see me,” he told them.

He took the familiar road along which he and Edward had climbed
into the coal cart when they went to see Clyde off to America. Nothing
along the road had changed. He came to Dentwater, and saw it had not
added a house or changed a chimney, England’s a damned finished kind
of place, he thought, looking over the village. He tramped to the cottage
that had been his home and stared at it and- did not ask to enter, A surly
old chap tilled the garden plot and looked at him suspiciously,

“I lived here once as a lad,” Jonathan said To excuse his presence.

“Eh, you’re not the only one,”' the man retorted, “Ifs changed ha'nds
often, ‘this place has. Chimney smokes.”

“I don’t remember that,” Jooatban said. do 'remember that from

,344

AMERICAN TMPTYCH

that window up yonder, if the day was fa,.ir, I could, see the sails of ships
upon the Irish Sea.” .

"'“Attic's full of stuff now,” the surly man said.

He left the cottage then and walked, down the street to, the school It
was no longer a school. Two ancient and withered old m,eE, sat on a
bench outside the door into which he had gone so eagerly every school day.

*“Whaf s this place,?,” he asked them,. . One of them was deaf, hut the
other took his pipe out of his mouth and sal,d, “Dentwater A.lmshouse,”
and put the pipe, in again.

“It was a school in, my time,” ionathan said and had ,th,ere been .answer
he would have asked next of his old schoolteacher. : But there was , no
answer, and he went on and took his lunch at the small , public house
which had been such a cause of quarrel between his mother and father.
The faces were strange, and he did not remind them of Clyde Goodllffe.
He drank his glass of ale and ate his cheese sandwich, and when this was
done he went down the street and into the empty church' and sat . a while.
A young curate came in, not yet out of pimples. “Anything I can do for
,you, sir?” he asked.

“I came to this church as a lad with my mother,” Jonathan said. “The
rector was old then, and his name was Clemony.”

“He’s in the churchyard,” the young priest said. “Maybe you’d like to
see Ms grave?”

“If you please,” Jonathan replied.

He followed the fluttering robes along the mossy churchyard path and
stood at the foot of two narrow graves. He remembered as clearly as
though he had been in church this morning the old vicar and his flying
white hair, preaching the brotherhood of man. What w’^as that old Clemony
had said about the blacks in India? Jonathan could only remember that
tears had streamed down the prophet’s cheeks as he cried out to the staid
and wondering people in the little village of Dentwater. . . . Beaumont
and the big war! Against the vague trouble of his own mind Jonathan saw
the faces of Stephen and Sue Parry, dark with sorrow.

“Where’s Clyde Goodliffe’s grave?” he asked abruptly,

“Here, sir,” the curate said.

And in a moment he stood beside his father’s grave. It was hard to
believe that under this still green sod lay the restless bones of that wild-
hearted man.

“You knew him?” the curate asked.

“Yes,” Jonathan said and shut his lips.

“He’d come all the way from America, and Ms family is mostly on the
other side-one son in Blackpool, I believe,” the curate said.

“Aye,” Jonathan said and turned away. He was glad that he had not
brou^t Ms mother’s dust here into this shadowy old churchyard. Let her
He where she was in the bright western sunshine.

He put Mine money into the church box, thanked the curate, and went

THE TOWNSMAM

,345

away. He knew now .ke could not live m .Dentwater, aod if not in Dent-
water then not in Englaii,c!. Yes, 'England’s made and inished, lie thought,
and ..hurried, his steps along the road he had come.' 'A man can’t do any-
.thing here but, live .out his time and die.

He took passage within the week for America.

. .. .; On the ship crossing the ocean he found he could not sleep for
ea,gerness. He rose at dawn' and went on deck where he could fee! the
ship’s speed and see the parted waves flow from -its sides. And while his
body was carried forward to its home Ms mind roamed backward over
the yea,rs and to his irst voyage over these same waters. .

ought to thank my dad, I reckon/’' he. told Mmself, thinking of the
unwilling lad he had been, *Tm glad now he pulled me up out of Dent-
water. I wish I. could tell him so.’’

He had been pulled up out of a small place and set in a large one. H'e
thought with joy of 'Median. It was the core of all his being.

**It’s the kind of a town I like/’ he thought fondly.

In a queer way Ms father had been right about life and his mother
wrong. No, they had both been right in their own ways. But they had
never been fused. Not all their passion toward one another had fused their,
eternal difference, he the wanderer and she the homekeeper*

‘'‘Reckon Fm the, mixture/’ he thought 'with so.me astonishm.ent. For was
he not the fusion? He stared down into the clear green waves and pondered
himself. Homekeeping he was and he had made a town his eternal home.
But the town he had set in the midst of land as wide as any sea.

“A love of a town,” he thought fondly, and knew when he said the
words that Judy had lost her power over him at last. It was not Judy now
who drew him, but Median, the creation of Ms being.

He found himself hungering for the first sight of it. He could not bear
a moment’s delay between ship and train, and seated by the window in a
day coach of the first train westward out of New York he watched the
rugged hills of the East shorten and smooth into the plains and his heart
began to beat fast. He knew better than he knew any human face the
outlines of Ms town, the comfortable solid shape, rooted in the prairie
and open to the sky. He was glad that Median would never grow into a city.
He had protected her from the ravages of cattlemen and had forbidden
her to the coarse men who might have spoiled her with gambling dess
and racecourses. Median was now what he had planned she should be, the
seat of a prosperous farming county, a town where laws were made and
enforced without cruelty, a center for homes and a place of rest for the
old. All around her, except to the south where the oil wells stood, the
wheat grew unbroken, green in spring and yellow at harvest, the fine hard
red wheat brought from Russia fay peasants. It made the country’s finest
flour.

His mind dwelled with rising love upon every aspect of his town. He

346

AMERICAH. TRIPTYCH

was prood of .Ms owa neat white, house with its greea . shutters and of Ms
good store. Jog. was there' bow looking' after things. His son’s, children
would be bom there in the town, toO'. Median was a good town .for chil-
dren, just as he had always planned.

He was to reach there in the midaftemoon of a Saturday and he had
told nobody of his coming. Again and again. he had maglned Ms home-
com.ing. He would get off the train casually, and say hello to, old Jackson,
the ticket agent, and then walk down .the .street to his house and gO' in.
Maybe the childre.n would all be out somewhere. They’d' come home and
find him. ^^Helio,” he’d say. ^‘Well, I’m back,”

When the train, passed the last station, he reviewed ail this in Ms mind
and found his heart beating -so hard that he was alarmed. He walked down,
the aisle and poured himself a drink of water. It was stale and lukewarm.

*‘Next time I drink it’E be from my own well,” he thought. That water
was the best in the world, clear and cold and pure.

But his heart kept on beating hard and he had to bear it while the train
pulled in at the station. He fumbled over Ms bag and forgot his hat and
hurried hack to his seat for it. He got off finally and for a moment stood
bewildered. He was the only passenger for Median, and almost Imme-
diately the train shrieked and went on again. The sun was so bright he
was blinded. He had forgotten how bright the sun could be in Median.
He stood uncertainly, looking about him. Then suddenly he heard voices
cry out,

: ‘‘There .he is.P

And down the platform a host approached him. He stood smiling sheep-
ishly, recognizing them all. Why it looked as if the whole town had turned
out to meet him!

“Mow’d you know I was coming?” he demanded as they drew near.

“We cabled Uncle Edward,” Jon said proudly. “He told us the ship and
of course we knew you wouldn’t waste time in New York. We have met
every train anyway.”

He was in a mist of happiness. The whole town wanted him back!

“I was going to slip in and surprise you ail,” he said,

“You’re the one that’s going to get the surprise. Dad,” Jon said.

“Where’s Isabel?” Jonathan asked. He began to suspect some extrav-
agance of welcome and to guard against his heart melting under It, he
looked severe,

“At home, getting ready enough cake and ice cream to feed the town,”
Jon said joyously.

But there was no more time for such talk. They were pressing around
him, all wanting to shake his hands. Faience, who was still the mayor,
took his bag,

“I can carry it,” Jonathan said. “Fve carried it a couple of thousand
miles.”

But no one answered anything he said. They were full of a superb secret.

THE TOWHSMAH

34,7

Jackson locked the railroad statioE and came, with them and they swcfjt
lip the main street, the young people singing and yelling and the children
biow.mg whistles.

never knew there was so much, noise in Median/'^ lonathan . cried.

'^'Never was heforef a voice shouted back at him.

Up Main Street they went, beyond the courthouse, beyond the church.

; *‘Where are we going?**’ Jonathan asked.

"Never m.ind,** Faience said, laughing. "We’re just going!”

They crossed the street, swarming around Jonathan, treading on his
heels. Then they paused and he stood stilL There .in' a big empty space
where years ago he, had planted hardwoods on the edge of the town he
saw the foundations for a big building. Walls had been laid to the level
of the ground, but only in one comer bad they reached above the level.

"What in time—** he began.

"Hush!** said Jon.

He stood silent and the crowd drew back from him. He looked down,
and saw at his feet a great white marble stone, cut square and polished
smooth. There were letters on it— he read his name.

The Jonathan Goodliffe High SchoaV^

He began to tremble and he felt his son’s steadying hand on his arm.
The mayor stepped forward and drew a paper from his pocket and began
to read and the people listened.

"Friends and fellow citizens of Median,** the mayor said in a loud
voice. "We are gathered today to perform a most significant act—**

Jonathan stood rigid, his eyes on the stone. There upon the eternal
marble, he went on reading— in honor of Jonathan Goodiiffei the
man who more than any other made and shaped the town of Median imx?
a goodly home for us and for our children^'

The mayor’s voice rang out through the trees. "We have laid these
foundations for our new high school, the school which we dedicate today
to Jonathan Goodliffe, the man whom we all delight to honor. We de-
liberately choose to express our love and gratitude now, while he is alive
and active among us. We want him to know today how^ Median feels.”

Median had made a monument for him! His heart dissolved and he
would have wept had he not fixed his eyes sternly upon the shadows 'danc-
ing over the mayor’s bald head and shaven cheeks. A bird sang shrilly In
the hardwood under which they stood and a boy threw a stone into the
leaves and it flew away. Of course he did not deserve all these things
Faience was saying. He had simply lived in Median and done his duty.

The mayor was finished. He stooped and picked up something and put
it into Jonathan’s hand. It was a shining sEver trowel.

"Will you lay the cornerstone of our new school, Jonathan?” he asked,
Ms voice natural again.

"Yes/* Jonathan said. "Of course-yes-”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

..B'Ht. tlie, big white stone biorred toroiigh Ms tears. Two men stepped
forward'-Ms son and Steve Parry.

, "1 saw Beaumont,''* he muttered to Steve. “I want to tell you-”

" '"Later, Mr. Goodliffe, sir,” Steve whispered.

' They heaved the stone up before him, and Steve took the trowel and
filled It with mortar, and put it back into hls/ hands again, and somehow
he smeared the stuff on the wall and - together Ion and Steve placed, the
stone.

"The cornerstone is laid,” the mayor announced.

It was over. They were all gazing at Jonathan. He looked away, ',b'ut
wherever he looked, he met. the eyes of Median warm upon him. .'Un-
utterable shyness rushed over 'hi.m. He tried to smile and felt his face
stiffen.

"We talked over a dozen things we wanted to do for you,” Faience
said tenderly. "Some of the people, wanted a bronze statue.”

Jonathan felt his tongue unloosen. "Nonsense, that,” he^ said sharply.
‘Waste of money and for what?”

They roared with laughter and he smiled and felt his blood begin to
flow again. He fiung his hand toward the foundations and tried to make
the gesture careless. "The school’s the thing,” he declared. His eyes
twinkled. "I shall plant some ivy at this corner and let it grow. Fm a
common chap— no reason why my name should be on the school more
than anybody’s.”

They shouted laughter again, they hugged him and all but smothered
him with their joy in him.

"He’s just the same!” they cried to one another. "Jonathan Goodliffe,
you haven’t changed a bit!”

"The same old screw,” he agreed. "Why not?”

They carried him down the street in the heart of the crowd and Jon
went ahead to tell Isabel he was coming. But Jonathan turned his head and
looked hack. It was odd to think that his name would be there upon the
cornerstone, forever! Long after he was dead and buried, his body dust,
his name would be carved solidly in the midst of Median. Generations of
children, coming and going, would rea.d'-Jonathan Goodliffe.

"Ifs queer how I like it,” he thought. "I like it wonderfully well”

Ti-ie Mg house stood, on the top of' a.iatteoed hill outside the town of
Manchesterj VermoEt* It was an ancient house, built nearly one hundred
years before the last Mrs* Win,ste.ii died. and before William Asher married
her daughter Elkor .and changed it to the Asher house. It was not entirely
changed at that, old Vermonters still called It the Winsfen Home and a!»
ways would. William did not resent this for he liked the house as it always
had been. He was not afraid of losing his identity, It did not occur to Mm
that such a thing could happen. He was large enough in mind, to be Mmself
under all circumstances, and so to enjoy Elinor’s heritage and make it his
owm. There was an Asher house on Long Island which he could have had,
as an only child, had he wanted It. But he had learned k his childhood, in
the soft green summers k Vermont, to love the town of Manchester and
the graceful mountains about it, and he sold the Long Island house without
compunction when Ms parents died.

The Wksten house itself had been built so large and solid that the fol-
lowkg generations of the family had not added so much as a wing to it
Before its founder, Adam Wksten, ' had died, in the early years of .the
nineteenth century, he had needed a Mg house, for he begat a family of
twelve children, nke of whom lived to. grow up. Most of the grandchildren,
however, had gone West, The house, huge as it was, could not contain
them, and in the west, grown rich on gold and railroads, they had ail but
forgotten that they had come from Vermont Yet in the earlier century
there was always one Winsten to live on in the house, and old Mr* Wksten,
the last 'of them and Elinor’s father, as lean and wintry before he died as an
aging elm tree, had been an Adam, too. But none of Ms sons wanted a
house so big that new servants would not stay after one look at the stretch-
ing roofs, and none, neither son nor wife, wanted old Bertha, the cook
who had lived k the house for as long as any of them could remember.

In the end the children all went away except Elinor, the youngest, and
she stayed on with her mother and old Cousin Emma, who had always
lived k the Mg house. It was during these years In the summers that Wh-
Earn fell in love. He and Elkor were married soon and very quietly after
Mrs. Asher died of a stroke one spring day,' when she had worked too long
over her rose beds. Cousin Emma announced after the wedding that she
had always wanted to live in New York, and mow she would do so, since
Jessica, who was the dead Mrs. Wksten, had willed her enou|^ money.

Aumxcm TRIPTYCH

This left the house to Eikor and therefore Wllliani who liked the idea
of living in It The Ashers had always been merely a summer family, so
far as Vermont was concerned, and William loved Vermont and hated
being a transient. New-fiedged from Harvard Law School, he had opened
his' first smaii office in, Manchester and there it stEi was, for seatinienfs
sake, for now, years later, as a snccessfu! lawyer, he was co,mpelled to
have Ms main office in New York. Betwee.ii New York and Boston it, had
been diflicolt to choose, hut the Ashers w^ere a New York family and to
continue bis business life there made a nice balance between the past and
the present.

The big house remained exactly as it had always been. On the .outside it
was 'white clapboard and green shutters, but u.nderneath the wood the walls
were of brick, and so the windows had deep sills. The house stretched long
and not quite symmetrical, two wings on one side and , three on the other,
all set back some feet from the central p.art, which was three stories high
and severely plain except for the carved front door. A long driveway of
elm trees, now so old that William had them regularly inspected and rein-
forced eveiy autumn before the winter winds came down from the moun-
tains, led to the lawn before the house. The first Adam had planted the
elms widely apart so that the driveway was spacious and lent its space to
the house. When the front door opened it revealed the same instinct for
space within. A wide hail ran straight ffirough the house to a glass door at
the back, which opened upon an enclosed garden. Double stairways joined
above the door, and to the right and left were, what had always been
called, since the first Adam’s .day,, the, east and west parlors.

The furnishings were still fine, the pleasant mixture of an old family
who bought the things they liked in each generation and put them together
without thought of periods. Elinor had considered the rooms overfurnished
when she became the mistress, md she had invited her brothers and sisters,
scattered over distant states, to take certain pieces for their own homes
as mementos of their common childhood. The mahogany velvet-covered
chairs and sofas and' the specialpieces which had always been in the house,
such as the long French mirrors between the front windows in the parlors,
of course no one thought of taking away, any more than they would have
thought of digging up by the roots the old syringas and Macs, or the vast
elms themselves. Certain tMngs . belonged in the big house and the Winstens
had proper respect for them, '

The house had not seemed ,strange to WEIiam Asher when he moved
into it as a bridegroom, that late spring day, now twenty-five years ago.
He had been in and out of the house every summer of his youtk Elinor’s
brotheis had been his friends and in that sense he had grown up with her,
only gradually aware, as summers passed, that he was falling in love with
her. Thus, too, he had grown used to Bertha, and her husband, Heinrich,
who was the butler, and it was not strange to have them as Ms servants
after his marriage. It had not been so easy to get used to their daughter

VOICES IM TEE HOUSE

3'53

Jessica, however, bom to Bertha and Heiimch the year after he and Elinor
were married. For: the two stout elderly ■ servants to have an unexpected
child ^ was preposterous, they felt it' so and were embarrassed and con-
fo'onded. . Elinor had laughed a great deal,, but she gave them permission
.when they asked to name the ch.ild Jessica, after the dead Mrs. Winsten,
her mother. And so the strange little Jessica had grown up in the kitchen,
on the fringe of the, big house, although WiHlam was scarcely aware of her
existence, except to wonder sometimes, when he caught a glimpse of her,
w^hat^ would become of her. She was a servant’s cMld and yet it was dif-
ficult to think of her as such. She was quite exquisite as she grew out of
.babyhood, very slender, her eyes electric blue, her fine spun hair as yellow'
as the traditional gold.

Once years ago, when he came home, William had walked through the
unlocked door to find Jessica in the east parlor, a child then of seven, but
with a duster In her hand, for Bertha was already teaching her to help.
She was not using the duster, however. She was sitting on one of the rose
velvet chairs, her eyes unseeing and bright, her lips upciirved in a vague
sweet smile, as she gesticulated with the hand that held no duster, a delicate
child’s hand, white and soft and not at all a housemaid’s hand.

When William stared she recovered herself with a gasp,

^‘Oh, Mr. Asher, I never heard you,’^ she whispered. She jumped from
the chair and ran to the kitchen, while he called to her not tO' mind. She
was only a child, and although he had been afraid of children until his
own were born, he did not like to frighten so tender and pretty a little
creature. But she did not return. The next week Bertha sent her away to a
convent in Canada, an English convent, where the nuns, she told Elinor,
would be more strict than French nuns.

‘^Jessica is so little to be sent away,” Elinor had said half remorsefully
when she told William.

**Too young,” he agreed.

Nothing could change Bertha’s mind, however, and they let Jessica go.
They were young themselves in those days, they were deeply engrossed
in their own life and love. Jessica came home sometimes in the summers,
yet never to stay long. Bertha found her troublesome and when Heinrich
died in the year that Jessica was ten, Bertha let her spend even the vacations
in the convent, until, she was old enough to leave for good and work as a
maid in the big house. As a maid, they were ail used to her now, although,
as Elinor said, Jessica would never be as steady as Bertha and probably
she needed to get married. Still, as Elinor had said again only this morning,
who was there to marry Jessica except Herbert, the chauffeur and house*
man, who had come seven years or so ago, after a succession of unsatis-
factory substitutes for Heinrich? He had fallen in love with Jessica at once
In Ws slow stubborn way, and for love he had stayed on in the big house,
k spite of her persistent, half-laughing, half-an^ refusals.

Ttife servant gossip, as William caHedJt,' was merely mild diversion and

■354

AMSmcm TRIPTYCH

subject for Elkofs sprightly aad huinorous descriptioE whea he came
home tired from the office. He iisteaed, oaly partly heeding, as, a form of
relaxation, while she put the chiidrea to bed. Now of course' the chlMrea
were grown up, Winsten married and Edwin and Susan away .'at, college*
He and Elinor were alone again in the big house.

The train, swinging between the Ve,rmoii,t hills, stopped, with a jerk at
the station, and William gathered his' pape'rs. together, slipped^ them, into Ms
black leather briefcase, and prepared to get out at once. Elinor, had , given
him the briefcase last Christmas, and it had then been brown. The differ-
ence between brown and ' black, in a , lawyer’s briefcase, is delicate ,but
profound, and William, gazing at the new briefcase, had betrayed Ms ow,ii
doubt

Elinor had laughed. “Give it back to me/’ she cried, her, blue eyes
sparkling in frosty mirth. “Give it back to me, William, and Fll exchange
it for a black one. You’ve had black ever since I knew you and I wondered
what effect change would have upon you.”

“It is not a question of the effect on me,” he had replied. “I am con-
cerned with the effect on others. Clients expect a certain sobriety.”

To this Elinor had returned nothing but her smile, sweet beneath the
sparkling eyes. He was relieved, however, whea a few days later he had
found the handsome black briefcase, his initials impressed upon it in pale
.'gold.,, , . ■ ■

Herbert had asked for the day off, which explained the coming home by
train. It was pleasant to look out of the car window, however, and see
Elinor, waiting for him on the platform. She was here to meet Mm, driving
the car herself and she was still, after twenty-five years of marriage, a
pleasant sight to him. She had come in her own car, a small dark green
convertible, which however she never converted. Today at the end of sum-
mer the windows were rolled down, but the top remained fixed. She sat in
the front seat, smoking a cigarette in the offhand dainty sort of way which
was natural to her, a slender, rather tall woman, who had never cut her
blonde hair. It was soft, almost straight, and now, although she was only
forty-five, it was growing white, and because it had been so blonde, he
scarcely noticed it, knotted heavily at her neck as she had always worn it.
Had she not been so dainty, so thin, so fine-boned, she might, he sometimes
felt, have looked a slattern. As it was, the slight disorder always apparent
about her person seemed accidental. He had learned not to point out that
the top button of her white silk blouse was open, revealing the glimpse of
a bosom surprisingly young. He knew that to remind her was to risk a
smile, a shrug, certainly not the button buttoned, A pin, one of the many
brooches he had given to her, would have taken the place of the stitch
or two needed to tighten the buttonhole. She would probably never take
the stitch, he now knew.

“Herbert not back yet?” he inquired as he got into the cat, his eyes

. VOICES ■ IN THE ' HOUSE

355

averted. Slie slid .over^ yieidkg the wheel to Mm. It was accepted between
them that he was the better driver because he was more steady and because
the late afternooH traffic did not annoy him. Manchester in summer w'as a
tourists’ town,, highly refined, of course, but 'tourist in spile of that. The
Equinox Hotel was filled with the best people, but Cook’s tours in buses
screeched in the streets while others found less expensive hostels.

came alone because I wanted' to tell. you-Jessica has decided to marry
Herbert/’ Elinor said..'

..“No!”

'^Yes, she has at last. They w^ere away all day together.”

He swung down'' the street to the right, and. after some blocks 'turned
into a road which after two in.iles of silence md green, gave into their cwvn
lane.

“After seven years,” he murmiired, ama.2:ed.

“I always knew that Herbe'rt would get her in the end,” Elinor said.

“I wonder if she really wants to marry .Herbert,” William mused, not
caring. It was a delight always renewed to drive toward the massive house
on the hill ahead, and he slowed the car.

“Don’t' tal.k about Herbert as a husband,” Elinor said, rather sharply..

WiUiam smiled. Elinor was too fastidious, she did not like Herbert, and
the less because she could really find no fault with. Mm,. He was an exem-
plary character, faithful, honest, silent, hardworking, and burning with se-
cret energy. It had not taken her long to .discover that this energy was
directed .to a relentless pursuit of Jessica,

William remembered. “Six years ago this summer, I believe it was, you
told me that Herbert was in love with -Jessica and that she hated him.”

Elinor reminded him. “You said that it was a pity he wasted Ms efforts,
and I told you that if he kept on he would win.”

He turned Ms head to glance at her profile and saw It enigmatic, her
delicate lips severe, her eyes doubtful, her eyebrows lifted. The wind was
blowing back soft strands of her hair leaving her forehead bare. She had a
Mgh forehead, not knobby, but intelligent and beautiful. The look meant
that she preferred not to talk about the matter any more. He fell silent,
knowing that when she was inclined she would talk, explaining herself
fully without being urged.

He swept the car gently into the driveway, stopped it at precisely the
proper spot, opened the door for Elinor, and got out on the other side. At
tMs moment Herbert came from the house by the pantry entrance and took
over the car. He was still in his best double-breasted blue suit.

“Good evening, Mr. Asher,” he said.

“Good evening, Herbert,” William replied. He paused, his foot on the
lowest step to the columned porch. The columns had been added to the
house only fifty years ago by Elinor’s pandfather, “I hear you’re to be
congratulated,” he went on,

Herbert’s face, did not deepen Its usual brickish red. “Jessica gave me

356 '

AMERICAN TSIPTYCH

iier word today,” lie said. He had a lipless mouth but his small greyish eyes
were not unkind. ■ ■ . ■

“Weil, weE,” WEliam said. “You’ve been very faithful.”

“I never looked at another woman,” Herbert said. His voice, flat and
firm, suited his square-set body. Dutch ancestors somewhere, WEliam
thought, had given him the blockhouse buEd, the thick hands.

William smfled and mounted the steps and' Herbert drove the car away
to the garage, Elinor was already in the house, she had run up the marble
steps whEe they talked, as light and fleet as ever she had been. He saw no
glimpse of her,' however. She was already'' in the kitchen or^ upstairs or in
the garden and he entered his sEent house. He did not mind the absence of
his chEdren, knowing that they were at the unreachable age, lost in a time
tunnel out of which they would emerge when they were fully adult, as
Winsten was beginning to do. He could talk to his elder son as to a man,
but Edwin was still impossibly young and opinionated. Susan as a woman
he felt he did not know and the chEd she had been was gone altogether.
He took Elinor’s word for it that she was aE that he hoped she was and
meanwhile he enjoyed the fact that she was certainly very pretty, although
he regretted that she had not inherited her mother’s permanently slender
figure. Susan looked like his side of the family. She was dark and inclined
to be plump, and she would have to look after her diet, as he had learned
to do. He had once let himself get fat in his thirties and it had taken Elinor’s
repulsion to alarm him enough to bring himself down. Not so long as he
lived would he forget that midnight scene.

“You don’t love me as you used to, Elinor.” He had said that because
she turned her head away.

“Oh well—” she had murmured.

Desire, rismg toward high tide, had suddenly ebbed. He seized her chin.

“Look here, teE me the truth!”

She had been ashamed to teE him but she did it somehow, because he
forced her, and that night for the first time he began to understand the
difference between himself and Elinor, the dividing difference, mdeed, be-
tween man and woman. Her passion was a secret silver spring permeating
aE her being, connecting nerves and feelings, whEe his was a river, separate
and strong. The river flowed in him independent of all else, determined
upon its own course, but anywhere the spring in her could be stopped by
distaste, by moods, by thoughts she concealed.

The boys took after the Winstens, through some perversity of inherit-
ance they were tall, fair and extremely handsome, unnecessarily so, espe-
cially Edwin. But Susan had dark curly hair. He was very fond of Susan,
with a peculiar secret fondness which he excused on the grounds that she
was his only daughter.

At the top landing he met Jessica. She appeared at her usual speed, a
slight creature, flying down the long wide hall, her pale green uniform

VOICES IN THE HOUSE ■ 357

fluttering, her wMte apron ruffing and the bows at her back all .ends., and
ribbons. She was only twenty-four and looked much younger. , .

“Don't hurry, Jessica,” he warned her. “You'll fall down the stairs one
of .these days.”

“Oh, I don’t mind what happens to me, Mr. Asher,” she replied. Her
hands, were full of fresh towels, she was putting away the' laundry,' and the,
smell of clean ironed linen was about her- like a fragrance. She was shining
clean, her Monde braids wrapped tight about her head and little damp
sweat curls encircled her face.

“Always in a hurry,” he grumbled. '“You make me tired just to look at
you. So you are to marry Herbert, after aH these years!”

She laughed suddenly. “Oh, that man! I have to get rid of him somehow.
It’s Mother’s doing, reffiy. She says it’s time. I might as well marry him as
anybody.”

She was a creature so childlike, though woman grown, that instinctively
one felt playful merely at the sight of her. Her uniforms, pale blue or
pink or green, her little ruffled white aprons and caps, made her as unreal
as a servant on a stage.

“I don’t know that you can get rid of a man by marrying him,” he
said rather more seriously than he felt.

‘*Oh, at least he won’t keep asking me,” she retorted. She spoke English
with a clear pure accent, the result of her years in the convent. Bertha
still had a guttural German edge to her tongue and Heinrich had never
mastered the English language at all. But this child of theirs spoke with a
silvery sweet voice and a carved beauty of words. He had once said to
Elinor that Jessica had come from the convent speaking English like an
angel and she had said, “Do angels speak English?” i

“Tongues,” he had replied, “of which English is doubtless the most beau-
tiful,” He liked good English, he was somewhat precious about litera-
ture, and often felt that had he taken the time he might have been a writer.

“Well, I suppose you know what you are doing,” he now grumbled to
Jessica who stood with her arms full of the fragrant linen. “All young
people seem to think they do, anyhow.”

He went on to his room where everything was laid out as usual for his
bath and change. Jessica did that for him and for Elinor and they would
miss her, unless, of course, she kept on working, which he supposed she
would not. Herbert Morris would not want his wife working even though
he would probably ask for a raise on the strength of getting married.

He averted his mind from the thought of Herbert Morris married to
Jessica. There was something distasteful about the involuntary picture
which crept into his mind like the unroUing of a secret film, that solid
brutish body fastened upon the pale delicacy of Jessica. He was shocked at
his own imagination. Civilized as he believed himself to be, the antics of
the human brain were distressing. He had no wish, indeed, to imagine
Herbert Morris in any way whatever, and he felt only the utmost repulsion

358

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

toward the fellow except as he daily appeared, respectable and decent "in
bis chauffeiif s nniform, or houseman’s coat So far as he. was concerned,
this was the' only Herbert Morris there was. Nor, lor that matter," did he
have the slightest interest inthe pale delicacies of the maid Jessica. He was,
he believed,' a man of clean heart and this by choice and taste, , yet here
was his antic mind, and if his mind , could so exhibit its inner lawlessness,
the inward brute, he supposed and most unwillingly acknowledged, what
must other 'minds , be, less controlled than hlsf '

It did not bear consideration. He dismissed the matter by' turning his
thoughts firmly to the cle'ar and' bodiless aspects , of the law. He; was at
this time involved in' an interesting case which concerned the, claims of
two inventors, who unfortunately had produced almost identical improve-
ments: in machinery for the treatment of drying woolens. Independent of
each other and unknown, the two minds had followed strangely similar
paths. Which had begun first the thought process and how inexorable was
it that one had been shrewd enough to reach the goal of the patent office
first? In such cool rumination, he finished the changing of his garments
and went down to dinner with a mood both pleasant and calm. Jessica
and Herbert were only servants again.

Immediately he received a shock. As he came downstairs, his step noise-
less upon the carpet, he saw Jessica. Taking advantage, he supposed, of the
space of time before dinner while she waited for them to appear, she was
in the east parlor, sitting in the rose velvet chair. It was not only this. She
had taken off her apron and her cap and she had moved the chair so that
she could see herself in the long French mirror between the windows. She
had even changed her hair somehow, It stood about her face In a fluffy
yellow cloud, and she was talking In a low musical conversational voice
almost distinctly. He paused on the stair, remembering with some indigna-
tion, the same scene years ago, which, he supposed, had made Bertha
decide on the convent. But this was worse. Jessica was actually speaking
words of love to some unseen person.

''But, my darling,” she was saying, "don’t you see that I love you? Ev-
erything I do is for you. This house, the gardens, myself, would I care
for it all as I do if it were not for you? Would I stay here when I could be
in England or France or Italy, if it were not for you?”

She laughed softly for someone, shook back her hair and reached out
her arms.

This was monstrous, he thought in consternation. He was very glad that
Elinor had not seen it He came forward firmly, and Jessica hearing his
step turned with a flying movement of terror.

"Oh, it’s you—” she breathed.

Her face went absolutely white, a bluish white, she snatched at her cap
and apron and put them on wiffi swift and trembling hands.

"Were you imagining yourself in a play?” he inquired not unkindly.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 359

■ She looked .at. Mm as though she did not comprehend. ^TleasCs please
don’t, tel anybody!” she wMspered. . ■ . .

“Then you think yon were doing wrong?” he asked.

“Please!” she begged.

“You are very foolish,” William said severely.

Again she threw' him that fearful uncomprehending look and fled away,
kitchenward. He stood frowning for a moment, pursing his irm mouth,
then he decided to let the moment pass. What Jessica was saying before the
mirror was too sily to repeat even to Elinor.

In the kitchen Herbert and Bertha looked at Jessica as she dashed in,
her cap awry, her apron crooked,

“You look like somebody was chasin’ you,” Herbert said in a fond effort
to amuse her.

“I ran downstairs too fast,” she said, trying to control her quick
breathing.

“Always she runs,” Bertha complained. “What for? It don’t make some
sense.”

But the atmosphere was benign. They were not going to scold, Jessica
could see, not today, and turning her back on them she began to place
the bouiUon cups on the slver tray.

Her life was distinct and separate from the rest of the house, a life
witMn a life, and the two worlds meeting only at the points of service
had nothing to do with each other spirituaUy. Bertha, large, sensible,
firm-faced in her grey cotton uniform, sat at the kitchen table, slicing roast
beef for Herbert Jessica stll did not sit down. On every table in the kitchen
the dishes were in disorder, but the oblong center table was set with
straw mats and the red handled Mtchen knives and forks. Herbert sat at
the end wMch had been Heinrich’s place when he was alive. Upon the day,
now six years ago when Bertha told Herbert to sit there, he knew that she
was on Ms side. Six long years it had taken to persuade Jessica that he
was going to marry her, seven years he had been after her, but now that
he looked back, he felt that if Heinrich had not died, he would still have
been in pursuit and she would still not have given in. Her father was al-
ways on Jessica’s side, no matter what she wanted.

“Sit down, girl,” he ordered her.

Jessica sat down and began to eat daintily from the plate her mother
had piled too Mgh. Never could her mother learn that the sight of too
much food sickened her and long ago she had ceased complaining.

“Miss Elinor told me I should fetch up a bottle of champagne to wish
luck,” Bertha said now.

She got up, heavy on her feet, and waddled to the refrigerator where
the bottle was cooling.

“Ah,” Herbert said wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “That
was nice of her. Next to beer, I don’t know but what champagne is as good

■ 36 §'

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

as you can get A' cold glass of beer is always my favrit but tbaf s not
saying Fm against the champagne for once.”

^'Jessica, iiebchen, eat,” Bertha commanded. ‘It iss a big day for die alte
mutter.”

Jessica looked up, uncertain, quivering, slight, conscious of the two faces
turned toward her, each with its peculiar and terrifying yearning, as though,
she thought, she were a mouse .and they were large affectionate cats. She
smiled a quick and brilliant smile, her armor of defense.

‘‘Oh, Fm eating, Mother,” she cried in her high sweet voice, and she
continued to smile while her mother poured the sparkling wine into the
second best goblets.

They held their glasses high in the German fashion, Herbert self-con-
scious, embarrassed, unable to share in Bertha’s open sentimental mood.

“Here’s to you, my children,” Bertha said. “Be happy, dear ones, and
give me grandchildren. Herbert, be good to my liebchen, and Jessica, you
be a good wife like I teached you.”

They drank, Bertha solemnly and slowly, Herbert in gulps, and Jessica
in quick sips.

“Ah,” Bertha said, setting down her empty glass. “I think of der lieber
fater. How happy today would he be, Jessica!”

“Don’t talk about him,” Jessica said sharply.

“No, no,” Bertha agreed. “Nothing sad today, it is right. Eat now,
liebchen,”

She took her own knife and fork again and cut the roast beef upon her
plate into large square bits and began solidly to eat her dinner.

Herbert did not talk while he ate. He had grown up on a farm where
conversation was not to be thought of with food. He clutched his fork
upright in his left hand while he sawed the beef with his knife, held in his
right. Jessica looked away. When they were married she would tell him
that the fork was not held so. But then he had not had the opportunity
to learn such things that she had. She waited at the table and saw how
people held their forks, people who knew.

Mr. Asher used his fork and knife so nicely, eating in a way that was
never repulsive. She had always liked Mr. Asher, even when she was
only a child. His marriage to Miss Elinor was a real romance, like in fairy
books, the handsome dark young man, well mannered, his voice pleasant,
and nothing repulsive about him. She looked at her plate steadily now
while she ate, taking the smallest bites, careful not to look at Herbert or
her mother, who were repulsive when they ate. But she was twenty-four
already, and no one else had asked her to marry him, because she had
never let anyone ask, for who had there been except butcher boys and
grocery clerks and shopkeepers? Herbert, too, she had tried to prevent
from the very first, six years ago, but he was not to be prevented. He was
always about and he simply kept saying the same thing over and over
again, and her mother telling her that she must marry somebody and so

VOICES m THE HOUSE

3,61

■why not Herbert because' be was solid and good. They could live on the
■chicken, farm and: Herbert would look after things In the evenings. ..■It
would make a home for all, of them, even for her mother when she got too
old to work any more. ■ ' '

, “Dondt pick, Jessie,” her mother said sharply at this moment. ^‘You eat
'good now, like I tell you.”'

Immediately all appetite left her. When she was small, a pale little girl,
always too thin, her mother had pushed food into her mouth and held it
there, her big fiat palm tight' over her mouth to keep her from spitting it^
out. Once she had bitten her mother’s palm and her mother had slapped
her mouth until it bled, and then her front teeth were loose for a while.
Yet she knew her mother loved her. Her mother loved her terribly, terribly,
and that was why it was so wicked not to love her back.

Herbert held a fork full of food, poised, “You want to put some meat
on your bones. You’d feel a lot better.”

“Oh, I feel well enough,” she said, laughing.

The bell rang from the dining room and she darted up and fiew to the
door. “Ah, they’re ready,” she cried.

“She’ll settle down once she’s married,” Bertha said.

“She’ll have to,” Herbert said.

“Her father was flightylike,” Bertha went on, “he was immer so qvick
changing, and fussy, too. I settled him, when we was married, ya, yust like
I settle Jessie too, when she comes here. She lissens to me, and she iissens
to you, you vill see.”

“All the same,” Herbert said, “I’ll be good to her.”

“Sure,” Bertha said, “I am good also. Vy not? She iss all I have.”

Autumn was the season that William liked best of all the year. He had
never been an enthusiast for spring, although it had been spring when he
fell in love with Elinor. Because it was spring he had distrusted the violent
attraction he felt the moment he saw her that summer when he was twenty-
two, especially as he had seen her every summer for years before without
thinking of love. He had even been mildly in love with someone quite
different the summer before. Marian Heyworth was a neighbor, a nice girl,
he still thought, when occasionally he remembered her, not with any in-
terest but with placid wonder at the turn his life had taken. The Heyworths
had owned a summer place next to theirs in Manchester and Marian was
decent about Elinor after the first shock. Indeed, it had been her accusation
that had revealed to William the full enormity of his new passion. He was
of a dogged nature, however, and when she faced him with the truth he
acknowledged it.

“I think you’re right, Marian,” he had said. “I regret it very much but it
has happened.”

He had never regretted it, of course. Elinor was not only his wife, she
was still his beloved, a very rare combination, he believed, after so many

362

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

years. But lie had not allowed himself to speak. Ms lo¥e nntii. after the
summer was well begun. In the dogdays, hot .and humid, on a particularly
uncomfortable day when they had paddled down the upper reaches: of the
hrook near the house, he had proposed and been accepted promptly. Elinor
: had not seemed surprised. When he inquired why not, she had said ' in a
matter-oMact ¥oice, ,‘l’¥e been expecting it, William. .Marian told me that
you had told her.”

He had been shocked at this frankness between the two girls he knew
best but he said nothing. Men would never have spoken of such sacred mat-
ters but he knew now that to women nothing was sacred. He winced when
he thought of it, but he knew it was true. Elinor’s bridge parties confirmed
his conviction. Quite against his will he had sometimes overheard the re-
marks of the seven women in and about Manchester who were her best
friends, whose seven husbands were also Ms best friends in the country
club, and he was always shocked. He did not believe that Elinor was so
wickedly frank as the seven unwise wives, but he did not dare to ask. He
simply went on believing that she was not, because he considered her
unique among women and very near perfection. Her graceful head, poised
upon a rather long slender neck, the soft silver-gold knot of hair at the
nape, to tMs day sent a ripple of delight through his blood. He could not
keep from touching her when he passed her, his hand smoothing the hair
to the contour of her head, or pressing the firmness of her small breasts.

Autumn, then, was his favorite season, the early autumn, beginning,
here in Vermont, somewhere in late August and ending with the first snow-
fall. In his way he was an outdoor man, not hunting or shooting, but en-
joying the shallow curves of the pleasant mountains, the change of color
upon the trees. This morning when he came downstairs he saw a tiny grey
feather lying on the rust brown carpet of the living room and he stooped
and picked it up. It was the feather of some small wild bird, the wind had
blown it in when the door was opened, perhaps by Jessica when she was
sweeping. But how delightful to live in a big house where yet one could
find upon the carpet the feather of a bird! He put the feather between the
leaves of the book lying on his special reading table, the current book
which he now read as he waited for Elinor to come down to breakfast.
It happened to be Proust, and it pained him to realize how remote the
story was, how far from France today, or from life in any part of the
world, indeed. He felt the permanent hidden nostalgia that all men of his
age feel, he supposed, for the era they knew as young men, the safe, as-
sured, happy years wMch unaccountably had simply ceased to be. In Ms
way he had been a young radical, alarming Ms parents as today he was
alarmed by Winsten and Edwin, not because they were radical, far from
it, but because they were so conservative, so prudent, so dangerously care-
ful not to ally themselves with the slightest possibility of revolt. Two safer
young men than his sons never lived, and he hid from them his own doubte
and queries, as a liberal. He still classified himself as a liberal, a conserva-

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

363

live liberaly 'of course, but certainly a liberal, a point of view wMcb dis-
gusted bis sons. Susan so far bad shown no interest in politics or the world,
or in anything except herself and her chances of marriage. It mortified him
sometimes to see how single-mindediy she pursued her quest of a mate.
Smely Elinor had not been so obvious or so determined. Above all, Susan
detested, despised was her word, the women who in the past had devoted
their lives to feminism, or as he preferred to put it, to the equality of the
sexes. His own grandmother had been a friend and helper of Elizabeth
Gady Stanton but' Susan begged him not to remind her of , it. Among the.
family photographs was a picture of .the two ladies taken together, in
hooped skirts and side curls, and Susan, coming once upon the likeness of
her ancestress had expressed fierce scorn.

“Women like that have set us back so far with men that we can’t mend
the damage!”

“Explain yourself,” he had demanded.

“Don’t you see, Dad?” Susan had cried. “They made men hate us!”

“Rubbish,” he had retorted. “I don’t hate any woman.”

“You wouldn’t like me to be a lawyer, would you?” she asked too
shrewdly.

“I don’t think you’d make a good one,” he countered. “You haven’t a
logical mind.”

“There,” she said in triumph, “I told you! If it hadn’t been for the Stan-
ton woman and her kind you wouldn’t have thought about my mind and
I’d have been what I liked.”

“Do you wish to be a lawyer?” he had asked after a digesting pause.

“No, of course not,” she had said with outrageous calm. “That was just
a catch.”

He gave up. He could make nothing of this generation. Serious conver-
sation was impossible with them. They sacrificed their very souls for a wise-
crack, a form of speech which he loathed as destructive not only of sensible
communication but of civilization itself.

Elinor came down at this moment and he put down the book and
showed her the minute grey feather.

“See what I found upon the floor, blown hither by the autumn wind.”

She looked at it and smiled absently. “It’s only a sparrow feather, I’m
afraid. Probably two sparrows had a fight— they’re always quaiTcling in
the gutters under the roof.”

He put it back between the leaves without reply. There were times
when she caught his moods perfectly, replying so delicately true that he
could not refrain from taking her in his arms. At other times, as now, she
refused compliance. He understood exactly what she meant. Her mood
this morning was remote, she was to be let alone, he must not kiss her close,
she was off somewhere in the day to come, living ahead without him, and
he might or might not know about it. It had taken him a long time, at
least ten years, to comprehend that marriage consisted largely of mutual

364

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

, consMeration of the other’s mood, selfishly /perhaps, la order to keep
within the circle together. They had clashed a good deal in the early years,
because he had taken it for granted that a wife was supposed--not, of
course, to obey her husband, but' at least to consider him before she
considered herself.' He knew now that Elinor with all her delicacy was of
tougher fiber than he, that she could do without him better than he without
her, and that she could be most cruelly stubborn about letting him suffer
it out.

He suspected that what was true of Elinor was true of all women. They
could and did manage their own lives, either openly and above board as
Elinor did or else secretly. Yet he was completely happy with her, some-
times to his own surprise, and he was still infatuated with her, although
there were times when she made him thoroughly angry.

They sat down at the breakfast table, a rite which he always enjoyed
so much that he felt sorry for his friends whose wives did not rise from
bed in time to share this hour. Elinor enjoyed it, too, and did this morning,
for in spite of the remoteness of her mood she got up to kiss the top of his
head when it became apparent that he was not going to kiss her. He had
learned to leave her alone when she was remote, and here was his reward,
that she would, as now, come fluttering back, even if only for somethmg
so light, so scarcely felt, so almost worthless, and yet so valued, as a kiss
on top of his hair. He restrained himself from seizing her while she was
near, and was again rewarded by her kindling gaze when she sat down.

“I do like that grey suit with toat maroon tie,” she exclaimed.

*‘Thank you,” he said calmly. ‘T rather like it myself.”

Breakfast then went its usual way. They had faced each other, had
taken temperatures, had renewed their mutual approval and understanding.
He left the house for his Manchester office a few minutes later, and in spite
of her somewhat warming good-by kiss, he was able to put his entire
mind on his work. His marriage was entirely successful and therefore
safe* , ■ ■ ' ' ' .

The house which he had left in such peace in the morning was in a
roil when he returned to it in the evening. Elinor met him at the door with
her finger on her lip and a warning glance toward the kitchen.

“What is the matter now?” he inquired in somethmg less than his ordi-
nary voice.

“Bertha is angry at Jessica again,” Elinor sighed, “Neither of them will
talk about it. Jessica is upstairs with her door locked, and Bertha is glow-
ering over the stove.”

He was not as patient with servants as Elinor was, although he recognized
that this patience, inherited from the Winstens, was rewarded by the cling-
ing loyalty of Bertha. Forty years had imbedded Bertha deeply into the
family, like a pearl in an oyster, as valuable generally and yet as irritating,
he sometimes felt, as the pearl must undoubtedly be.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 365

“Herbert didn’t say anything,” he said, considering. Herbert aM'the way
home had been simply the block-backed figure, in the chanfienr’s .seat.

“Perhaps he doesn’t know,” Elinor said.

“Come, come,” he said, putting his arm about her. “You ' must not ' let
servants upset you.” He , was glad he had not told her of the scene of
Jessica before the mirror. ,

“I don’t think so of Bertha and Jessica,” she replied.

“Once you let servants become human beings,’’ he retorted, ,“you are in
for trouble. There are other cooks as good as Bertha.” '

“Poor Bertha,” Elinor said, but she relaxed, pleasantly in his arm as they
walked' toward the living room. There she had set out the tray for cocktails,
a task which was Jessica’s but which she had performed as a matter of
course when Jessica locked herself up.

“Shake it well, my love,” he said. She had taken the frosted cocktail
shaker. “Meanwhile I shall tidy myself a bit. I am sorry I am late.”

When he came down again, tidied, Herbert was waiting in his white
coat, and the house to all outward appearance was as usual upon a fine
autumn evening. The doors were open to the dining room, two places were
set at the table. He had thought, when the children went away to school,
that he and Elinor would be lonely, the house so large and, always before
filled with children, now so silent, so seemingly empty. He had discovered
after a very few days that his apprehensions were unnecessary. The house
was delightfully quiet, he did not miss the loud young voices, the poundings
of footsteps upon the stairs, the shouts from the upper windows. It was
pleasurable to wander through the rooms, orderly at last, to find a book
where he had put it down, and no litter of comic magazines. Only at
night sometimes, when sleepless he prowled about the house, did he see the
small ghosts of the living children, Winsten at ten, a blond slip of a boy,
always leaping, running, darting through the halls; Edwin, the brown boy,
deep in a chair in the library, a particular chair, his head bent over a
book, his features foreshortened. Many a time when he himself had sat
in the chair it was still warm from the body of his son. And the ghost of
Susan, fiesh of his flesh, yet female and alien to him eternally, they all
came back in the night, the children they once had been, and he yearned
over them and then he felt old age loom near because they were gone.
For though they came home at Christmas and in the summer, it was no
real homecoming. The house for them was now only a brief stopping place
on the way to the final destination. They were not lost to him, for he had
had them, newborn and helpless, the little children learning to walk and
talk, and then impetuous school children, and turbulent in adolescence.
Those were the children he kept and he did not miss the tali and gawky
young adults who came back so briefly to use his house as a place to bathe
and change before dances and dinners, a place where they slept and ate
without paying for it. He had wondered sometimes as they grew what they
thought of him and their mother, and whether they missed at all the

366

AMEmCAN TRIPTYCH

early closeness. Watching them, he had decided' that' they missed noth-
ing, and that they did not think. They were on their way to iinknown
places, blown by the winds of theh*' own desires. ' ■ '

Still, this was only his night mood. In the morning he woke up, rested
by silence, and when he was bathed and dressed his reflection in the mirror
was not at all that of an aging man. Quite otherwise, he looked what he
was, a man :in the prime' of his life, Ms hair scarcely grey except at the
temples, , and without a hint of baldness. But he inherited Ms thatchy hair, a.
brush until he had found a barber in the city who knew how to subdue
it by skilful cutting. . . • No, he did not miss the children. Being alone
with Elinor renewed Ms ardor,

‘‘Are you thinking of the children?” Elinor Inquired too shrewdly.

“How did you know?” he asked. He was accustomed to tMs second
sight, this intuition, telepathy, whatever it was that she possessed, but he no
longer feared it or resented it, as he had once done when they were young.
He had yielded himself to Ms marriage years ago, and now there was noth-
ing in him to hide, not even the will, once so stubborn, to maintain at least
his own individuality,

“I know your father look.” Her voice was tender with that special ten-
derness of wMch he had once been so jealous, because, it bad seemed to
Mm in the years of Ms youth when he could never possess enough of her,
that she loved the children more than she did Mm.

“I was wondering if they miss us at all,” he said.

“Of course not,” she replied. “If they missed us it would simply mean
that they were in retreat”

He went on to confess his guilt “Then I suppose it is not wrong that I
do not miss them. It seems pleasant to be alone with you in the house,
as we were before they were bom.”

The house then had seemed to him far too large, and he had been
eager to see it filled with children. Now it did not seem too large, perhaps
because of the small and lively ghosts whom he could summon by a mo-
ment’s memory. Life had been lived here and was therefore still alive.
Yet he and Elinor were very different from the two young creatures who
had come here newly married. They were facing life again, but wbat life?
He had not been quite sure, when the children left, what adjustments aging
lovers must make, and whether his reviving ardor would be acceptable
to her. But he had faith in her. That was Ms comfort. He knew men who
dreaded getting old with their wives. How fortunate was he that still above
all other companions he found Elinor the best, not merely because he
loved her but because her mind met his own. She was not a learned woman
and she pretended no inter^t in the law, for which he was grateful, but her
judgments were fresh, her approach to human beings was original and
direct, and she never lied to Mm.

“Do you not miss the children?” he asked somewhat tentatively. He
had avoided the question until now.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

367

■She gazed for a few seconds Into the clear amber drink she held aloft,
examining its color, with pleasure. A sensuous creature, he thought, finding'
an absorbing delight in shape ' and color, and never ashamed of physical
enjoyment, even of food. Her literalness, her natural lack of shame, per-
haps, were what kept her younger than her years. Nothing dried the blood
like false respectability, a, tendency toward prudery against which he him-
self struggled because he dreaded the possibility of seeming ridiculous. He
could never, for ^ example, have belonged to one of those organizations
which compeEed its members to garb themselves in pseudo-Oriental, robes
and when, as had happened last week in New York, such an organization
held its annual meeting in the city, so that he was compelled to see the
antics of bedizened elderly men, potbeOied or lean-shanked, one or the
other always equally silly, he went far out of his way to avoid them.

“I do miss the children,” Elinor said, “but not as much as I should. I
wonder why?”

“We have not seen a great deal of them in late years,” he said. “They
lead their own lives early nowadays.”

She said reflectively. “I think the real break began when we got the
television and they took to spending their evenings in the television room
without us,”

“The other day,” he said irrelevantly, only it was not irrelevant, because
television men had been photographing the neo-Oriental crowds on the
streets, “there was some sort of jamboree in New York, and I was ashamed
to take Michael Cotman up the Avenue. I felt I couidnT explain,”

“One of the animal orders?” she inquired, lifting an eyebrow.

“Something of the sort,” he replied, Cbtman was an English lawyer,
representing his own firm in London, a middle-aged, good-natured man
who asked no questions of anything he saw in the United States and ex-
pressed no opinions. His assumed acceptance of all he saw was alarming
to any conservative American, such as William Asher considered himself
to be. It could mean anything.

Herbert came to the door, immense in his white duck coat.

“Dinner is ready,” he announced.

Elinor rose, putting out her hand for William’s arm.

“Come, my love,” she said. They marched into the dining room with
playful formality behind Herbert’s shielding back.

“I have always been so grateful,” Elinor said, while William pushed her
chair gently under her, “that you are exactly what you are.”

He sat down, smiled at her above the bouillon which Herbert set before
him, and meeting her eyes he saw there her love for him, shining like a
mild and steady flame. A very lucky man, he thought, to live so well into
middle age as he now was, and still see that light, which would last, he
trusted, until the end. He bent his head and then in the continuing silence
he heard quite clearly the sound of distant sobbing.

William put down his spoon.

AMERICAN 'TRIPTYCH

“Gaa that be Jessica?” he inquired. Herbert had left the room.

' is,” Elinor said, and then she added with ' unusual sternness, ‘‘She
should be ashamed to cry so loudly.”

“But, my dear,” he remonstrated.

" ■ “No, ' really, William,” she broke in. “When a woman cries out loud
I can’t feel sorry for her. It’s indecent. What if we all did that? The' world
would be- bedlam.”'

She' rose' and closing the window she cut off the sound. He did not
answer. What did she mean by all women crying? He had never seen her
shed a tear. He supposed that she had been too happy. He still could not
fathom her entirely, even after twenty-five years of close living. It was
simply one of those things she said, tossed off, meaningless except that
when he pondered them, he felt them edged. He finished Ms soup in the
artificial silence and Herbert came in and took the bowls away.

The bright autumn weather held. It was far too dry and the hardy chrys-
anthemums which he always enjoyed were small and dull, a disappoint-
ment, but not to be helped. He was very busy, for scandals had broken
out in the city administration and he had the task of trying to decide
whether he would defend the accused, and yet it was always difficult to
decide whether he should, when it was obvious, as he thought it was, that
the accused were guilty. The guilty had their rights, nevertheless, and it was
a point nice to define, where their rights were fulfilled and where their
gufit must stand.

He was face to face with the men, whom he was careful not to call the
guilty, for that had not yet been proved, one morning in New York in late
September. It was necessary for him to see them, in order, as they said,
to get their side of the story which was, simply enough, that plenty of
men had done what they had done and had not got into trouble and so in
fairness, why should they?

He gazed into three fat smooth faces, glazed with years of good living
and liquor, and tried not to recognize their racial origins, all different and
yet all symbolic of the roots of evil in the political system of the greatest
city in the world. Not that race or national origin had anything to do with
it, he well knew, but the environment which society had forced upon the
arigins had a great deal to do with it. City slums, gang fights, prejudices
and blows and finally crime had created the three he saw before him,
whatever their racial origins. He felt remote and clean, a grey Vermont
figure as he sat behind his desk and looked at them steadfastly.

“It all depends,” he said, “upon what you want of me. If you will be
content to have me fight for your right to plead your case, to be heard,
to present every extenuating circumstance, that I can and will do. But
if you expect me to prove you innocent, you will have to convince me first
of your innocence.”

The three fat faces looked blank. The big one coughed and spoke. “We

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

,369

know lawyers like you cost money and we’tt' pay.’^. He had, a strangely go,od
accents not an ignorant man* William decided, contemplating him wiii
Ms usual high, coo! gaze,

:*"Certainly I expect to be paid for what I do,”' Wffliam agreed, ‘‘but I
repeat my question— what do you want of me?”

The small fat one, the one in the middle, leaned forward coaxing.
•'"'Have a heart,” he said in a husky pleading- voice, a spoied child voice,
a babyish mouth, pouting and pretty. Somewhere along the way from the
cradle Ms mother had yielded everything to the baby face, the pretty mouth.
He was glad again that-Elinor had been too intelligent to, be a yielding
mother. He had thought her sometimes harsh, but she- had loved the
children cleanly and without self-indulgence. Her honesty had remained
inexorable.

'Won do not convince me,” William said coldly at last.

They had settled upon the defense, after he had spent the morning ex-
plaining to these three, who had never understood before, that innocence
was a quality entirely apart from their rights as citizens. Guilty they might
be, and he did not wish to know whether they were or not, for that was for
the judge and the jury to decide, but they had their rights.

The fattest one, the swarthy, greasy, silent one, had given a retching
sigh. “I guess if s the best we can do.”

It was hard for them to believe that he could not be bought, coaxed,
persuaded or in any way moved from his impregnable position. They
accepted what he said because they trusted him and knew he was able
but they could not understand him. That he did not refuse to defend their
rights, that he did refuse to defend their actions, here was confusion. He
saw it in their jowlish faces. They rose together, bewildered between humil-
ity and braggadocio, and left him cursing himself for a fool. Months of
sifting evidence lay ahead of him, dividing strand from strand, protecting,
in a sense, men whom he despised, and yet this was the honor of the law,
before whom none was guilty until guilt had been proved. He had defended
murderers up to the electric chair itself, and there he had left them,
knowing Ms duty done.

He went home at the end of the week, feeling that he would have been
exhausted except for the grimness of the task ahead of him. He could not
afford weariness now for months to come, in the dissection of the under-
world of this vast city which was to be Ms task. Thank God, he thought,
for his peaceful distant home, for his quiet wife, for security of the heart.

Jessica opened the door when he came home, dimpling at the sight of
Mm, pretty in a fresh blue uniform and white ruffied apron. There had
been no more sobbing from upstairs and the wedding, he understood, was
to be soon. She took his hat and coat, and tempted as by a child to a
pleasant remark, he asked,

^*When Is the great day, Jessica?”

370

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Her brightness did not falter. ‘^Next Saturday week, sir. If s Herbert’s
birthday,”

very special celebration, eh?” His foot was on 'the bottom stair. Up--
stairs he heard Elinoi' smging as she busied herself somewhere.

**He says,” Jessica agreed from the coat closet

He went on up the stairs and at the landing, which turned sharply less
than half way, he chanced to look down over the bannisters. There to Ms
astonishment he saw Jessica again pausing in the east parlor on, the way
back to the kitchen. It was the third time, once when she was a child,
once as a girl. Now she was a woman and again she seated herself in the
rose velvet chair in front of the long oval mirror, and in the mirror he saw
her reflected face, smiling, not indeed the bright childish smile he knew so
well, but an affected grimace, as though she beheld in the glass a stranger.
Her right hand caught up her short fair hair and held it on top of her head
in a new coiffeur and her left hand waved as though she held a fan. She
spoke silent words, twisting her pretty mouth, and her large blue eyes were
fixed in strange enchantment upon herself. What habit was this?

He was really startled now, and for a moment stood staring at her. Then
deciding not to betray Ms observation, this time even to her, he tiptoed to
his room, leaving her there with herself, a fancied self, a stranger certainly
to Mm. Was this the way she always behaved when she thought no one was
looking? When he and Elinor were away, when the house was empty, did
she make free with any room she chose, imagining what she chose, for-
getting her proper place as a servant? He was outraged at the possibility
and closing the door of his room, he paused to consider whether it was Ms
duty to tell Elinor at once. The distant sound of her voice was still to be
heard, her good contralto, a voice he had often thought might have been
trained to rich quality. Again he decided against mentioning the matter.
Elinor might take it far too seriously, and Jessica was so soon to leave the
house forever. Bertha had decided that Jessica was to go to the farmhouse
and be a proper wife, and Bertha would have a place to spend her vaca-
tions, a place to live when she was too old to work. There was no use in
making an upset these last few days.

He changed into his usual dark trousers and wine velvet jacket and then
went to find Elinor, trying not to feel troubled. The singing had ceased,
but he found her in the small linen room looking, so she explained, for a
certain lace scarf which she wanted for the small mahogany chest in her
bedroom. He stood waiting, enjoying her looks, and now glad he had not
disturbed her calm. Whatever she had been doing in the day it must have
been pleasant, for her face, expressive, mobile, was fresh and handsome.
She had put on a silver grey teagown which he liked, and she wore at her
bosom a pearl pink velvet rose. They embraced, and for once he wished
that his home was not so far from New York. The hope that Elinor might
be willing to come with him when he had to be in Ms city office, now
that the children were grown, was not fulfilled. She disliked the city, and he

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

37!

coEtlBued his coEtriving of time, Ms arraaged life, wherein the study' he
needed to make for Ms cases coeid be done in the Manchester office, : or
here at home, quiet days whose fruit, he hoped, was the soundness with
which later he argued for his clients.

was cheerfui to hear you singing when I came intO' the house,” he

said.

**That tune has caught itself in my mind ah day,” she replied. “A tag
end of that song we heard at the theater a month ago. But why was it in my
mind?”^ .

She did not expect an answer and he did not give one. She found the'
scarf and placed it^ and' they went downstairs together. The living' room
was empty, the rose velvet chair was in its place, and the mirror reflected
merely themselves, arm in arm.

The next morning Jessica waylaid Mm at the door to the library. He
had brought home with him in the black leather briefcase a mass of docu-
ments, letters, newspaper clippings, material his junior partners had been
collecting for him during the last week, and now it remained for him to
digest this until it was as familiar to him as the Mstory of his own life. He
had risen early, oppressed during his sleep by the faces of the three men
whose rights he had chosen to defend.

‘Tiease, sir,” Jessica said.

William stopped to look at her sternly, mindful of yesterday. ^^Yes?”

Jessica twisted her apron with one hand and the other flew to her pink
cheek. “Please, Mr. Asher, sir, don’t think you must come to my wedding.
I know Mrs. Asher will think so, because of my mother, but I don’t mind
a bit—indeed, sir, I’d rather you didn’t.”

He was impatient with her. “Yes? Oh well, Fll speak to Mrs. Asher
about it. As a matter of fact, I shall be very busy about that time.”

“And sir,” she pleaded, for this was not at aH, as he could see, though
puzzling enough, “could you not do one more thing? You are the kindest
one in the house— yes, sir, I don’t mean that the mistress isn’t kind, but
she’s for my mother, if you know what I mean and I can’t blame her for
that, for Mother has been here so long mid all, long before I was bom, of
course, but might I come back afterwards, sir, and do my work here just
as if I wasn’t married?”

This was quite outside his province. He never meddled in the house,
especially when the servants were really Winsten property^ Herbert having
come through Bertha, and Jessica belonging to Bertha. Besides, what about
yesterday? That sort of tMng could not go on unchecked.

Jessica saw his surprise, his doubt. Her violet eyes implored, lovely, yes,
he saw unwillingly, with long amber lashes shades darker than her hair.
Poor child-such beauty meaningless, he supposed.

Jessica hurried on. “If it isn’t presuming, sir, this house Is really my
home.” The vlc^let eyes swept the handsome old rooms. “I can remember
when I was such a small thing, really not more than three or four years

372

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

old, :I lised to pmh open that door, sir,” , she pointed toward the pmtTj
eEtrancc into 'the hall,, “and I’d stand there, pretending it was all mine. It
was naughty but that’S' what I did. And when I waS' a bit bigger, more bold,
I daresay, !■ used to come in when the family' was away and my father
out 'in 'the garden and Mother in the kitchen, and Fd sit down In that chair
there”— it was the rose velvet chair— “and puIMt up to the mirror and see
myself here in the midst of the beautiful rooms, and Fd pretend again. Oh,
I was naughty all right and that’s why Mother sent me to the convent
when I was only seven because she found me doing that and she said I was
getting above myself. But it was only that I loved the. house so much, and
the family, and I still do and must always, because it’s been my home,
like.”

He was astounded at all this and very uncomfortable indeed. Pretending
it was all hers! Did she forget he had seen her at it himself? “Well, Jessica,
I can speak to Mrs. Asher—”

“Oh, please, but not to tell her what I’ve said! For it is presumptuous,
I know that, and she might not understand, being one of the family, but
you, sir—”

He was very unwilling to admit an understanding that Elinor did not
share, especially to this girl who was so unsuitably a servant, for he
guessed there were ail sorts of delicacies and moods here which could not
possibly do her any good, her station being what it was, not that he believed
in station as any sort of permanence, but it took an energy he doubted
she possessed to get out of the estate to which she was born.

“Well, Jessica,” he said with determined coldness, “I will do the best
I can, but if Mrs. Asher decides your mother would be too much hurt by
our not coming to the wedding, you must forgive us if we are there. As to
the rest of it, you’d better wait a bit after the wedding. It might come
about quite naturally during the holidays, say, when the children are all
home, that we’d need extra help, and we’d call on 5^ou.”

She glowed far beyond the faint hope. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Asher.”
Her thin hands dew together.

“It’s no promise, mind you,” he told her.

“Oh, I’ll understand,” she breathed.

He went on toward the library and forgot her in the immensities of the
city corruption. By the end of the day, when he remembered again, the in-
cident seemed slight, not worth repeating to Elinor. He had learned long
ago that the peace in a home is kept as much by forgetting as by remem-
bering, and Elinor might be annoyed that Jessica had made so strange a
request as to come back to work instead of staying at home, a request
so calculated to annoy the far more important Bertha. Nevertheless, the
forgetfulness was not so complete that, days later, when Eliuor reminded
him of the wedding he told her that he would not be able to go. This was
true. Even had Jessica not spoken, he would have been hard put to it to
be at home, certainly not at two o’clock.

VOICES IN TliE HOUSE

373

■^'My dear/' lie,, said, 3^1 caanot leave the city at all next week. , I shall
have tO' go la early Moaday moraiag aad you woa’t see me agaM' uatii
Friday or even Saturday. We shall be, preparing our, briefs, the other ' men,
cannot possibly do' this without me, and I could scarcely attend the wed-
ding even if it ’were Susan’s."

^‘Bertha will be hurt," Elinor observed, “especially as the childre,ii aren’t
here, and the rest of my family is so scattered. My brothers and sisters
are nomads— I' don’t know why. I hope the children won’t be so. I suppose
Cousin Emma will come,."

“I am sorry you have a nomadic husband, too,"' he said lightly. , It
would have been easy to tell her now what Jessica had said, but it seemed
not worth while, the mood of a servant girl, which it had only made him
uncomfortable to share for a moment. He was glad that Jessica was
going and he would not help her to return. He was not pleased to think
that she considered this house, now his, as her home, even her spiritual
home, so to speak.

Thus the wedding took place without him and when he came home late
the Saturday after, tired and tense with the rising energy that he always
felt when a major case proceeded towards its climax, he forgot that
Jessica was gone. It was only when Bertha served the dinner alone that
he remembered. He felt compelled to be kind.

“Well, Bertha, not a daughter lost— a son gained, eh? I am sorry I
couldn’t be at the wedding."

“Flerbert will be back next week, sir,” she replied. “I toidt him a
week is piendy. Heinrich and me, we tookt only two dayss. But Herbert
sayss the chicken bans shall get a new roof and he makes it in the honey-
moon.”

“Good," he said heartily, but somehow feeling it not good at all.

“The wedding,” Elinor said when Bertha had left the room, “was really
pitiful. There was nobody there except Herbert’s brothers and sisters and
Cousin Emma. Her chauffeur drove her from New York. It was sweet of
her to come, but she kept saying afterwards in such a loud voice that she
didn’t like Herbert’s looks."

“Did Cousin Emma go straight back?" he inquired, for conversation.

“No, she spent the night here, and I had to assure her that Herbert
was really just the sort of person that Jessica needs. Jessica is rather flighty,
William. You don’t notice it, being away so much, but sometimes she is
quite wearing. Well-trained servants should never impose their moods, my
mother used always to say. Heinrich and Bertha never did. Heinrich might
have, he was inclined to be the soft sentimental German type, but Bertha
kept a firm hand. I know my father had only to look hard at Heinrich
when he fumbled something and Bertha took over.”

“How is Cousin Emma?" he asked, still in abstraction. He should really
have spent Sunday in the city. The single witness upon whom much de-
pended was under guard, but could the city be trusted?

374

AMEEICAN TRIPTYGH

^‘Fading/’ Elinor said gently 'and then she went .ons ^^I, often wonder
what Coesin Emma has had out .of life* She kept talking about Jessica as
a little girl. It seems she took notice of her when she visited us. Still she likes'
to live in New York, ‘the city of lonely women/ she calls it, where she
can enjoy music and lectures and art. She is getting queer, I suppose,
though so sweet.”

■‘*Queer?” he' echoed.

Bertha was serving a delightful baked scrod.

“She leaned towards me the way she does,” Elinor went on. “She tapped
my wrist. 1 have a beautiful Turner painting/ she whispered. Now where
could she get a Turner, William? They cost thousands. So I said, ‘Have you,
Cousin Emma?’ And she laughed without making the slightest sound and
went on. ‘Yes, in the Frick gallery. I sit there every day for hours and enjoy
it. Nobody knows it’s mine, but it is. I own it— in here, —and she tapped
her old caved4n bosom.”

Elinor’s father had made William one of the trustees of Cousin Emma’s
small inheritance. “I must look into that,” he said, troubled. “It may
be she is getting incompetent. She lives alone, doesn’t she?”

“In that old hotel,” Elinor said. “I’d go to see her oftener but it’s such a
distance.”

He looked at her half humorously, “A distance I travel weekly in order
to live with you.”

She acknowledged this fondly. “Ah, I know! I ought to take the house in
town that you wanted now that I don’t have the children as an excuse. But
I still hate the city!”

He had accepted this years ago, when she declared that she could live
nowhere but in Vermont, “Never mind, my dear,” he said. “The roads
are wonderful, the highways come almost to our door, and it is much
easier than it used to be for me when the children were small. Then, too,
I acknowledge that in this native air of ours my brain cells function well”

Nevertheless a few days later in a lull for new evidence he took an hour
away from his city office and went to call upon Cousin Emma, his secretary
having made the appointment.

He found her in a small overstuSed apartment, a lank agitated old lady,
a tali figure draped in chiffon of a faded blue, the color of her eyes, and
she was guarded by an elderly hotel maid, who opened the door and later
brought in the heavy silver tea tray.

“It is very nice of you to come and see me, William,” Cousin Emma
said. “I hope there is nothing wrong with my affairs.”

“Not at all,” William replied, taking his seat opposite the yellow bro-
caded satin chair. Gas logs burned between, and there was a reek of gas
in the air. He must speak to the superintendent. The kind old lady might
be suffocated some night, accustomed to the atmosphere, as he could
see, and every window shut. The gas logs looked old enough to fall apart.
He went on.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

375

‘‘Elinor told me yon liad gone op for Jessica’s wedding and I told; myseif
it had been a long time since I came to see you— too long. After allj yoiinre,
in a manner of speaking, my ward, you know.”

She gave Mm a sweet withered smile. “I am quite well, William. It was
a jaunt for me to get up to Manchester for the wedding, but Bertha had
written me about it and I felt some of the family should go. As' it turned
out, only Elinor and I were there. I remember Jessica so well before she
went to the convent-such a beautiful little thing and so gifted. Really,
William, it is a pity. I came upon her one day years ago, In the long east
parlor. She was at the piano, singing very softly, touching the keys quite in
harmony, and the most heavenly clear little voice. I ought to have taken
her straight out of that house and educated her in music. But—” Cousin
Emma leaned forward in her enthusiasm, “she paints equally well, or could
have, if she had been taught. I remember once when she was home at
Christmas she gave me a water color she had done for a present. She used
to make little gifts for me because she knew I was fond of her and she gave
them to me secretly. I found the water color rolled up and tied with a holly
ribbon and hidden in my bureau drawer. I still have it somewhere—”

Her eyes grew vague, thinking where it could be.

“And that man,” she said suddenly. “He is so very thick.”

He knew she meant Herbert. “Nevertheless very stable, if solid,” he
suggested.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Cousin Emma said, suddenly distracted. She wrung
her long thin hands. “Do you want some more tea, William?”

“One more cup,” he said to please her. “It is delicious tea.”

She was very pleased. “Oh, do you like it? It is special but so few people
would know. I get it from a Chinese shop, such a delightful place. I imagine,
you know, William, that I am travelling quite around the world, all the
while I am living here in New York. The other day I found a real Italian
fiesta, two streets downtown shut off from traffic, and there were hundreds
of lights festooned across them and the quaintest bazaar going on. I had
gone to buy this very tea when your secretary telephoned you were com-
ing. I often wish I had brought Jessica here with me, William. I believe
she would have been glad to come. You know, Bertha was too strict with
that little child. I used to see her snatchmg her by the arm. It wasn’t wrong
for the little thing to steal about those big empty rooms. Nobody knew
except me, really. Everybody else was so busy.”

“Yet Bertha loves Jessica very much,” he suggested, without telling her
what he thought of Jessica’s behavior.

Cousin Emma made a grimace of distaste. “Oh, don’t talk to me about
love, please, William. It’s made such an excuse. That is the way my own
sister Jessica used to begin— ‘You know I love you, Emma, but—’ ”

She laughed shrilly. Elinor’s mother was a woman gentle and beloved,
William believed, except by Cousin Emma.

Yet he could detect no signs of madness in the old lady. She had always

376

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

been wilful, difficult, frustrated he supposed because she had never married,
although she had had chances enough, he had been told, and he did not
know why she had not accepted any of them. So far as he knew, there had
never been a tragedy. He rose after a third cup of tea, relieved that no new
problem must confront him just now.

*‘You are going to be quite rich this year, Cousin he said by

way of parting cheer. “Your stocks are rising. Dividends are inevitable.”

But she was not cheered. “Oh, don’t speak of that,” she cried. “It’s only
this horrible talk of another war. I’d rather go to the poorhouse than get
rich from it.” She fumbled for a bit of ragged newspaper in her black
velvet handbag hanging from her wrist and put up her pincemez to her
eyes. “Making atomic bombs I” She put down the glass and gazed at him
with reproach. “And you talk to me about dividends!”

“Forgive me,” he said contritely. “I’d forgotten how you follow the
news.”

“If I weren’t so old,” she said dramatically, “I’d pour out my blood.
But they don’t want it. It’s too old. Why not? Does blood change?” She held
out her withered right arm, the lace sleeve falling back.

“I suppose it does,” he said. “I suppose the doctors know.”

She let the arm drop upon her knee. “I am very glad I never married.
I thank God I never had a son. I couldn’t have taken the suffering now.”
She leaned forward. “What are you doing about your sons?”

“They wlH have to do what other young men do,” William replied.

“There, you see,” she exclaimed. “They are in for a lot of suffering,
and you, too. That is what marriage brings. I do wish I had told Jessica to
come here. I didn’t think of it, not until I saw her standing up by that thick
fellow. Bertha is thick, too. I don’t know why I didn’t command Jessica to
come and live with me. She could have gone to the galleries with me. I
have a wonderful Turner there—quite my own, although nobody knows.”

Was this the tinge of madness? No, he saw nothing but the old wilful-
ness. Cousin Emma was entirely sane, merely wilful in her fancy, as she
had always been, delighting to bewilder.

“That is pleasant,” he said. “Now I must be going, Cousin Emma. A
most delicious tea— I shall have to tell Elinor.”

He pressed her long bony old hand, and went away. Nothing here
but the irresponsibility of age, he thought, the determination not to be what
people, he or anyone else, expected. It would have been very bad for Jessica
to live alone with this, much better, indeed, for her to tread the ordinary
path of woman, to marry, to have a home of her own and children in due
time. That way lay health and sanity and companionship. For there was
a companionship, he felt sure, in the mere sharing of a common life be-
neath one roof. Love was the glory of a marriage, the cup running over,
but marriage itself was the necessity. He doubted the enthusiasm of Cousin
Emma, he doubted the talents that she saw in Jessica, there was nothing
to warrant such gifts in the stodgy heritage of Bertha and Heinrich. The

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

377

Bons perhaps had given her taste, but it might be forgotten, if it still existed,
in the growing of her normal life. He dismissed Jessica, somewhat impa-
tient that. <|iiite' without his will or interest, she appeared so often and so
irrelevantly in his life.

At Christmas time Susan brought home a dog. William, riding in the
car half asleep with fatigue, his eyes closed behind Herbert’s stolid back,
opened them to see his daughter in the frosty dusk. She was waiting for
him at the gate, between the elm trees. He saw her short strong figure,
swathed in a white fur jacket, and then he saw a huge black dog of an
unknown breed, pulling savagely at a leather lead she had wrapped about
her right hand. He stopped the car and opened the window’.

*‘What’s that animal?” he shouted,

“It’s not an animal, it’s a dog,” she cried back at him. “His name is
Pirate!”

“I can’t get out,” he grumbled. “I can’t ask you in. He looks as though
he’d chew one up.”

“He’s only young,” she retorted, struggling against the plunging beast,
now furiously barking at the car, at the night, at everything, William
thought, most of all at him.

“Whatever possessed you to bring him home?” He was compelled to
shout because the dog had a deep bass roar that echoed through the woods.

“He’s immense,” she cried. “He eats two pounds of meat at a meal!”

“Two pounds! He looks as though he’d think nothing of fifty!” WEiiam
retorted.

He could not get near her and he called gloomily through the half dark-
ness. “rn see you later when I’m safe in the house. You don’t bring him in,
I hope.”

“He insists on it,” Susan screamed and braced herself against a tree.

“Horrible,” William muttered and closed the window. “Go on, Herbert.
The night air is cold.”

. To ail this Herbert had made no remark. He seldom spoke unless spoken
to and this, William thought, was his greatest virtue. Secretly he was aston-
ished at other changes in Herbert during the last weeks since the wedding.
Always a cautious and even slow driver, Herbert had begun in a stealthy
fashion to speed. Tonight he had crept out of the city at a sober rate, and
as he approached the parkways he had properly increased his speed.
Nevertheless after a while William had stirred from a half doze, aware of a
faint giddiness, and peering into the front seat he saw the speedometer
edging eighty.

“Good God, Herbert!” he cried sharply.

378 AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Herbert gave a violent' start and the car swerved dangerously close to
the other lane.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” William had shouted. That was another
folly the man had. When addressed he would turn his head, leaving the
car to manage for itself. “Youll get arrested!”

Herbert dropped so suddenly to fifty that the car seemed to stop with a
jerk. “Sorry, sir. My mind was wanderin’.”

“Never let your mind wander on the road,” William said sternly, and
he did not doze again for an hour.

Now entering the house he kissed Elinor at the door and began to com-
plain. “Herbert very nearly had an accident this afternoon. He was driving
at eighty miles an hour.”

Elinor replied with proper concern. “I can’t imagine it.”

“He was,” William insisted. “I spoke to him and he said his mind was
wandering.”

The door to the pantry opened and to his astonishment he saw Jessica
come in, dressed in a blue cotton uniform and ruffled white apron. She
dimpled at his surprise as she took his coat and hat. “It’s only for the
holidays, sir, but it will give me a bit of change.”

He remembered now that he had said something about this, and his
exacting conscience was roused. “Look here, I had nothing to do with it.
In fact, I forgot all about it You’ll have to thank Mrs. Asher.”

Elinor stood waiting, looking, he thought, somewhat aloof.

“It’s lovely being back, Madame,” Jessica said with a strange pleading
urgency. “Indeed I do thank you ”

“It will be a help to have you here while the children are at home,”
Elinor said. Her voice was cool and kind.

William turned to the stairs and felt her hand tucked in his elbow. They
mounted the steps together and in silence. When they reached the upstairs
sitting room they shared, the two bedrooms opening from it, she sat down.
This was a pleasant room furnished in the opulent but unadorned style
which he liked and which seemed native to the Winstens. There was no
bric-a-brac. There were no ruffles or dust catchers of any sort. The curtains
were a plain clear blue satin, very heavy, and the old Persian carpet caught
the same blue in its multifold regular pattern. Blue became his wife, her
eyes very blue under her silver blonde hair. He sat down to fill his pipe
before undertaking the task of washing and changing. The house was still,
but from outdoors he could hear the harsh bass roar of the dog’s barking.

“Is Winsten’s family here yet?” he asked.

“Madge telephoned that they couldn’t make it until tomorrow,” Elinor
replied. “Edwin came, but he went out at once to see Vera. Susan arrived
on schedule, with a young man and a dog.”

“I saw the dog,” he replied. “A vile beast.”

“You can’t say that publicly,” she retorted. “The young man gave it to
her.”

¥OICES IN THE HOUSE

379

"Where is he?”

Asleep j I believe. He ate a great deal of cake and a, plate Ml of sand-
wiches, declined tea and drank two highballs and then said he was sleepy.”
'*^Have we seen him before?” William inquired. ■

“No, dear,” Elinor replied. “He*s quite new.”'

“What’s he like?”

Elinor considered. “A good deal like the dog—Iarge, rough, a plain fam^
ily, I judge— oh, very plain— but Susan tells me the girls think he’s won-
derM.” .

This made him think of something. “Why is it this generation of^ young
females likes them in the rough? If I remember, you used to keep me right
up to the mark. Now the more the young men talk out of the comer of
their mouths, swear, sprawl, generally act like gangsters, the more girls like
them.”

Elinor considered this. She sat gracefully composed, a figure as aristo-
cratic as could be designed, perhaps, in a democracy as new as America,
her narrow feet, encased in silver slippers, crossed beneath her long skirt of
fine black lace over some sort of a cherry-colored stuff, satin, he supposed,
since it did not rustle. She disliked rustling garments.

“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully. “I do know that I detest Susan’s
young men. I only pray that she does not marry any of the ones we have
seen.”

“Vera, on the other hand—” he said, thinking of Edwin.

“Oh, Vera, of course, would be wonderful,” Elinor said at once. Then
hesitating, reluctant, she went on, “I have a mad sort of notion that I
ought not to put into words.”

“Do,” he urged. “Between us, we have said a number of mad things.”

“I wonder if Jessica has some ridiculous notion about Edwin?”

He was startled indeed. “Now that really is mad,” he said. “Jessica,
trained by Bertha, could scarcely so forget herself! Besides, Edwin is only
a kid— what’s Jessica?”

“Twenty-four—”

“Well, then twenty-one to twenty-four,”

“Edwin is very handsome, and I would feel happier,” she went on, “if
Jessica were not so pretty— oh, so what people used to call refined, you
know— delicate, perhaps, and certainly far too sensitive for a servant,”

“What did you see?” he asked, unwillingly troubled.

“Jessica laughing, her hands on Edwin’s shoulders, and he looking down.
Mushing—”

He was so much upset by this that he felt he ought to tell her something
which until now had not had a shape definite enough for words, not the
posturing before the mirror, but something he had not expressed even to
himself.

“You know,” he said with uneasy reluctance, “Jessica has a very odd
way with any man.”

380

jmBmcm triptych

She looked at Mm with eyes suddenly direct. “What do you mean,
William?’^''

He did not know how to -answer. Put into words; it seemed too' much
beyond the truth. He laughed but with constraint. “There, I don’t know
what I mean. When I try to explain, the thing escapes me. Perhaps it’s a way
she has of looking coaxing or wistful. It has always made me uncomfortable
and I escape immediately. I’m sure she’s too innocent to know how she
looks.”

“No woman is so innocent,” Elinor said, quite without rancor, he de-
cided, after he had stared at her.

“We are bom wise,” she said, now, he believed, half teasing him. “It’s
our only escape to freedom. The more enslaved women are, the more
wise we become.”

“You aren’t enslaved,” he declared.

“Then I am not wise?” she demanded.

She had slipped mto the remoteness where sometimes she lived for days
at a time. He knew the mood so well, and long ago he had learned merely
to smile, to accept, and if possible to love her more while he waited. He
replied, “Though I am a lawyer considered famous in a mild way I know
better than to let you engage me and I shall go and wash the city from me
and change into something comfortable. As for Jessica and Edwin, no, I
will not believe it, but I shall keep my eyes open.”

“It reassures me,” Elinor said, “to have you say that even you feel
Jessica makes a special approach. So long as it is to all men, my dear—”

“Make the best of it,” he replied tranquilly. He felt too tired to be
serious.

The trial in the city was not going well. That star witness, that treasure
store of evil knowledge, had been allowed to escape long enough to be
bribed by the devil only knew what, so that he had refused to divulge
what he had promised to tell and he was now behind prison bars where he
was entirely safe, but entirely useless. The city would have to pay for a
long renewed examination of facts hidden inside that solid skull to which
there was no combination known that might force the lock and lift the lid.

He forgot his family while he bathed and shaved again, for his beard
grew apparently upon city soot and dust so that he must needs shave at
night as well as morning if he was to present a cheek smooth enough at
bedtime to tempt Elinor’s lips. Then he heard a door open and slam shut
again and a clatter upon the stairs such as neither of his two sons had made
even in their liveliest childhood. It was, he knew at once, Susan’s young
man, the Pirate, he thought, the giver of the dog so like him that even
Elinor the merciful, the tolerant, the more than kind, saw the resemblance.

The resemblance was plain enough to him, too, when later he entered
the east parlor. The dog was lying on the rug before the fire, where no
dog had ever lain, for William was not a lover of dogs and when the
children had clamored for those animals in their childhood he had per-

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 381

mitted cocker spaiiieis but only outdoors. He was sensitive to tlie smell
of dog and the room, was full of it .

*‘Susaii,^® he began, impetuous with horror, seeing his daughter vaguely
in a yellow frock billowing about her slender' waist and brown shoulders.

“I know. Dad,” she said, *^but Pete says that Pirate simply has to be
indoors or hell howl all night.”

An immense young man rose out of his own leather chair, a length of
male flesh and bone, hollow eyes pitch black under heavy black brows' and
stiff black hair surely never, brushed nor combed and needing to be cut.
The fellow wore a dark suit of some sort, but the coat was carelessly un-
buttoned over a rumpled blue shirt in which he had undoubtedly slept. His
high cheek bones were red, his red ears were too big and the hand which
he now thrust out briskly was enormous and hairy,

Asher?” he bellowed.

presume,” Susan said pertly. “Don’t you know the proper address,
Pete? Dad, he’s Peter Dobbs.”

But Pete had never heard of Livingstone in Africa, and the mild joke
escaped him.

“I’m pleased to meet you,” he said with a loose southern accent. “I’ve
heard a lot about you. I been readin’ the papers since I got to know Susan.
I really admire the way you been cuttin’ circles round the gangsters. Too
bad they let Bergman escape, if you call it that now he’s in jail.”

The dog leaped up and braced his forefeet. The thick black hair on its
back rose at the sight of William. He growled like a bass drum.

“Shut up, Pirate,” Pete said carelessly. “Lie down, dawg! He’s just not
used to you all yet.”

“I doubt that I shall ever be used to him,” William said with tartness.

“I reckon you will,” Pete said comfortably. He folded himself in the
leather chair again.

“Pete, get up,” Susan said imperiously. “That’s my father’s chair,”

“Don’t disturb yourself,” William said with bitter courtesy.

“Get up, I tell you,” Susan repeated.

Pete got up, amiable, to take another chair. “I don’t care wheah I sit,
just so the chair’s big enough. I don’t like anything tight.”

“Sit down, Dad,” Susan commanded. “He really doesn’t care. He’s good-
natured but you have to speak plainly to him. He doesn’t understand any-
thing else. It makes him awfully easy to get on with.”

She spoke these outrageous words in her calm contralto, a pretty voice,
a soft resonant sweetness under its attempted curtness. William sat down,
feeling helpless. The huge dog collapsed on the rug again and he found
himseff staring into its furious eyes. They were fixed upon him under lower-
ing brows, red in the reflected light of the fire.

“That dog looks bad tempered,” he said, somewhat sourly. Privately he
made up his mind that he would speak to Susan alone at the first moment
and command her to remove this wild animal from his hearth.

382

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘‘He ain’t bad tempered,” Pete said. “He just looks thataway-cain^t help
it.”

“Like you,” Susan said without a smile.

Fete guffawed in admiration. “You sure have a mean little tongue!
Some day when you stick it out at me I’m goin’ to take out mah knife
like this—” he took a large clasp knife from his pocket, and flipped open
the blade, “—and I’m goin’ to cut that little tongue right off and give it to
Pirate to eat up.”

William listened to this in horror. He felt unable to cope with it. Gang-
sters in a courtroom in a vast wicked city were all very well, but he did
not expect to find a monster in his own house.

“Where is your mother?” he asked Susan. “Tell her I’d like my dinner.”

“We are waiting for Edwin,” Susan replied without stirring. “Mother
said he telephoned at the last minute that he was bringing Vera to dinner.”

Commotion in the hall signified Edwin’s arrival and a moment later they
came in, his tall younger son, blond as all the Winstens were, and with
him the equally tail Vermont girl, the daughter of the local banker, Vera
Bates, a silver birch of a girl, severely beautiful, whose lips, though thin
and straightly cut, were tender.

He rose gallantly, this was his kind of a girl, a reassuring youthful
creature whom he would delight to welcome into his house and family.
The dog rose again to growl, but Vera stooped and smoothed down its
rising scruff and the belly growl subsided. The bpast snorted and sank down
again.

“Your inestimable charm,” William said, and putting out his hand, he
felt her cool palm against his.

“Good evening, Mr. Asher,” she said very correctly.

“Good evening, my dear,” he replied, “and you, Edwin, are looking
very well, my son.”

He felt happy again. There were also these young people, and the
soundness of a great country was that, however unpleasant parts of it
were, and however uncouth certain sections undoubtedly were, there were
to be found elsewhere one’s own kind, those of whom he could be proud.

He felt mildly sorry for Pete, the uncouth and unpleasant, and when
they were all seated he leaned toward him.

“What sort of dog — ”

At this moment Elinor came in from somewhere, the pantry perhaps,
for she was concerned about her table, fastidious over the serving of food.
She pressed Vera’s hand gently and sat down in the chair left empty for
her, the rose velvet. William rose and pushed the small needlepoint foot-
stool toward it.

“Thank you, dear,” she said.

He sat down then and surveyed his family with a loving care and found
them good, and feeling sorry again for Pete, whom he could never count

VOICES IN THE HOUSE ' 383

among ttiem, lie leaned once more toward that nncoutli yonng man who
had remained sprawled in amiable silence.

“What sort of dog is Pirate?” he inquired, not koowkg what' conversa-
tion could be made that would include this incongruous pair.

“He ain’t any sort of dawg,” Pete replied without embarrassment. “He’s
just a mungreL We got plenty of dawgs like that in my dad’s place. I took
to Pirate because he’s big. He’s smart, too. He kin learn. He’H do anything
I say. Hyeah, Pirate—”

Pete snapped his fingers and the dog sprang up bristling, ' its glittering
eyes alert, its sharp ears cocked,

“If I told him, he’d spring at anybody in this room,” Pete said proudly.

■ “Oh-”

The half strangled cry came from the doorway and they turned their
heads simultaneously to see who had made that cry, so strange, so stifled.
It was Jessica. She had come to announce dinner, and now, facing the
dog, she stared at it in terror, her hands knotted at her throat. The dog rose
stealthily to its feet, its eyes fixed upon her.

“Lie down, dawg,” Pete commanded,

“Jessica,” Elinor said, warning.

“Yes, Madame.” The hands dropped. “I— dinner is served, please.”

Jessica disappeared. They rose and the dog did not move.

“Come here, Pirate,” Pete commanded.

The dog followed him into the dining room.

“Lie down there,” Pete commanded, pointing to the spot beside the
closed French doors.

The dog hesitated.

“Lie down, I say!” Pete bawled.

The dog collapsed heavily and Pete sat down and grinned at them all.
“Like I said, he’U do anything I tell him.”

Jessica did not come in again. Herbert served the dinner, rather better,
William noticed, than usual, and paying no attention to the dog, who
growled every time he came in until Pete yelled at it. It was true. The dog
obeyed.

“You’ll have to teach me your magic,” Susan said to Pete. They sat side
by side and the dog lay on the carpet behind them.

“No magic,” the young man replied. He was comfortably ladling food
into his mouth with a strange combination of knife and fork working to-
gether as a conveyor. “He listens to one person at a time, ’at’s all. Which-
ever person he belongs to, ’at’s the one he listens to.”

“How will he know he belongs to me?” Susan asked. “When I’m gone,
he’ll turn to you.”

William heard this with alarm. “You aren’t leaving the dog here!”

Pete lifted his huge head from his plate. “Susan’s Christmas present,” he
explained.

“Oh, no!” Elinor cried.

384

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Edwin lifted Ms handsome eyebrows at Vera, who answered by the
slightest drop of her eyelids. Neither spoke.

Susan turned impetuously upon her mother. *‘He won’t bother you, I
shall take him back to college. The charwoman says he may stay with her
if they won’t let me keep him at the dormitory.”

Elinor did not reply. Long ago she and William had agreed that not at
the family table would they contend with their young, and certainly not,
her firm face declared, before this stranger named Pete.

Her eyes met William’s down the length of the table and he responded
at once. ‘‘The weatherman predicts a white Christmas,” he said with proper
pleasantness. ‘T hope so, for Winsten’s children will enjoy the snow so
much.”

“Fll have to get out the old sleds,” Edwin suggested. Edwin always
joined loyally in any necessary turn in the conversation.

“Do,” Elinor said heroically. “We haven’t used them for so long. It
will be something new for the children to have a white Christmas. They
were too small two years ago to remember. I don’t believe that even little
Billy can remember that far back, do you, William?”

“Certainly not,” he replied. And behind the loyal conversation he was
thinking that tomorrow the unspeakable Pete would be gone. What was
the fellow’s last name? He had forgotten— not that it mattered! And as
soon as he was gone he would command Susan to put the dog outdoors
where it belonged.

Pete went in the early morning, flinging himself tousled into a car so old
that nothing like it could be seen, William felt sure, outside the circle of the
Ozarks. He surmised that under the wrinkled top coat and the same suit of
yesterday Pete might stM be wearing his pajamas. He watched all this from
his bedroom window, wakened by the noise, but prudently not appearing
until this voice in his house was gone. Susan he now saw come flying out
of the door when Pete started the engine into a gasping roar of noise
and smoke. She was frankly in her red wool dressing gown, a scarlet
figure, her dark hair down her back, surprisingly long since last spring
when she had decided to let it grow. William closed his eyes lest he see his
beloved daughter kiss the unshaved and altogether repellent young male
in the driver’s seat, and then he opened them quickly in the hope that he
could see for himself this was not to happen. It did not. Pete reached out
a long arm from which a pajama sleeve could be seen distinctly from
underneath the top coat, he squeezed Susan hard enough to make her
shoulders disappear, but there was no kiss.

“Thank heaven,” William breathed, and climbed back into bed to sleep
for another hour.

Sleep was impossible, he quickly discovered. He had ordered Herbert
last night when he went to bed that as soon as Pete left the dog was to be
put outside, and Herbert now obeyed. The creature was asleep on the

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

3S5

hearth rag again and Herbert' went in masterfully and seized its collar. He
was a man brutishly strong and the dog felt himself lifted up and half
choked. He growled and' could make no sound. The man was astride his
back dragging him as he walked, A moment later the dog felt itself pushed
through the door into the cold and the door was locked upon Mm. It
iung its body against the door, bellowing, and this was the noise that
William now heard, the uproar, the howls of a wild animal, and then
he heard the dreadful sound of clawing upon the oaken front door, the
pride of the house, the door so old that tradition said it had come from a
massive oak upon the mountain side, already hundreds of years old when
the Winsten family settled here in Vermont. He leaped out of bed, hastened
into his woo! dressing gown and met Elinor and Susan upon the stair,
Herbert and Jessica converging upon them from the pantry and Bertha
panting behind from the kitchen. William threw the door open and the
dog hurled itself into the house.

“Absolutely this will not do!” William shouted. He turned on Susan,
his pale eyes so furious that for the first time in her life he saw she was
afraid of him. He took advantage of her astonished terror. “I will not
have that dog in the house.” He shouted in a way that surprised himself.
“Get the beast out and keep it out.”

Susan ran into the east parlor. The dog was on the hearth rug again, its
enormous body pressed down, immobile with determination, its head on its
great paws, seemingly docile, but its eyes were baleful as he glared at
them all.

“Pirate.” Susan fell on her knees beside him. “Good dog, Pirate.”

The dog lifted its head at her and bared its teeth.

“Susan, come away,” Elinor cried. “It’s dangerous. Oh, what shall we
do, and the children due in less than an hour?”

It was true. Winsten’s train would arrive before nine o’clock and it was
nearly half past eight.

“I shall send it away,” William said firmly.

Susan screamed at him. “I won’t have him killed! He’s only strange.
He knows Pete has left him. He’s frightened of me because I’m strange
to him, too, now that Pete isn’t here. He’s always seen us together.”

“The dog can’t stay here,” William said, inflexible, but his heart, to his
own disgust, began to melt in him. There were actually tears in his child’s
brown eyes.

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Elinor murmured.

It was Jessica who now surprised them all, Jessica who was always so
timid. She stepped forward from the rank of servants where she stood be-
tween Herbert and Bertha and she said quite dearly, “Fll take the dog,
Miss Susan. I’ll take it home. I’ve changed my mind, please, about staying.
Mother can manage.” She looked from one surprised face to the other,
and fastened on William. “Please, sir, ifs that I don’t feel quite well, all
of a sudden. Herbert didn’t want me to come in the first place*-he said it

3B6

AMERICAH TRIPTYCH

would iipset me and it has somehow. But we could do with a watch dog.
The house; is so louely. Fm often quite frightened. I daresay it will get used
to me when it’s alone with me there.”

Was this not solution,, with the train time so near? They looked at each
other uncertainly. Herbert did not speak.

Elinor turned to Bertha. “Can you really , manage?” She saw that Jessica
meant to leave at once, only why, when she had begged so earnestly . . . ?

“Herbert helps me,” Bertha said.

“Of course you may all go home after the dinner is served tomorrow,”
Elinor said.

“Y<2, Bertha agreed.

So it was done. Once more Herbert attacked thp dog. He flung one leg
over the dog’s back and seized the neck with such strangling force that
the creature could not turn its head, could scarcely breathe, its choking a
mere guttural mutter in the throat. Herbert dragged the dog out between
his clenched knees.

William opened the front door and they all stood watching the man
clutching the dog, mastering it by a force as brutal as its own, until they
reached the old Packard taxicab which was Herbert’s private conveyance.
He lifted one band to open the door, and the dog, loosened, snarled and
turned his head enough to snatch the man’s arm. Herbert kicked the dog’s
belly and in a rage he lifted the animal with his hands and one knee, flung
it into the vehicle and shut the door.

“I won’t come in the house,” he called. “My arm is drippin’ blood.”

“You must go to the doctor,” Elinor called back.

“How can Jessica drive with that beast?” William shouted.

“She’s safe enough in the front— there’s a thick glass between. And I
don’t need no doctor. The dog’s not mad— only mean.”

They stepped back into the house and through the window William
watched the dog flinging itself against the doors and the glass, barking in
a frenzy and then howling long screams of fury. In a few minutes Jessica
came from the back door, neat in her long blue cloth coat fitting her
slender figure, a little blue hat close tp her head, looking as usual so unlike
what she was, a servant. Without a glance at the dog she climbed into the
closed off front seat and drove away.

It was over, the house was restored to decency and Christmas peace.
William went upstairs and bathed and dressed and came down again
shaved, composed enough for the day. Eiioor and Susan were already in
the dining room, waiting for him .

“Where is Edwin?” he asked. He pushed Elinor’s chair in behind her, a
habit so ingrained that he no longer noticed what he did.

“Would you believe that he is still asleep?” Elinor replied.

“I’m glad he is. I wish I were,” William grumbled. “What a way to
begin Christmas Eve!”

Susan, he was glad to notice, was entirely subdued. She had on some

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

387

sort of negligees a rose-colored wool He disliked negligees at breakfast^
but be did not mention it, since of "course . she knew it. She was drinking
her orange juice slowly, as though it were hard tO' swallow, and she looked
pale, ■"

Herbert came in with the coffee. Bertha had bandaged his wrist neatly,
don’t see how Jessica can possibly manage that dog when she gets
home alone,” William said.

told her to leave him be, Mr. Asher, sir,” Herbert said. told her
to leave him stay in the back of the car until he was starved quiet. When
he’s weakened enough, FU handle him. Fll teach him who’s master.”

Susan lifted her head for protest but William met her eyes sharply and
at once. Their gaze was a clash, he did not yield, and her eyelids drooped.

“A very good idea, Herbert,” William said.

^‘Thank you, sir,” Herbert replied and poured a cup full of coffee.

There was enough going on in the world outside his family, William
Asher told himself somewhat sourly one April evening, while he knotted his
tie in front of the mirror in his dressing room, without having something
going on again in his own family. He had the same feelings of resentment
that he remembered having when he was a boy, more than a boy really,
quarreling with his own father in a subterranean fashion, because he
wanted to stop being merely summer people, and become bonafide citizens
of Manchester, in order that he might see Elinor every day. He was then
learning to play the piano, had been learning for some years, and he
played well enough to accompany Elinor while she sang, unless she chose
something difficult out of German opera, which he did not feel suited her
voice, even then. She had learned better as time went on, and he still
enjoyed playing her accompaniments, though of course when they mar-
ried and had the children that sort of thing had to wait. One of the pleas-
ures of having the children out of the house at last was that Elinor and
he had begun music again and he was delighted to find that his fingers were
still nimble and her voice still lovely, though much lower in register than it
had been when she was young. And again he remembered, that the sum-
mer before they were married, he had a strange infection in the palm of
his hand, a swelling from within, there being no sign whatever on the sur-
face skin, but simply first a soreness that mounted in a few days to a deep-
seated agony centered in his hand but pervading his whole being. The fury
of it was that he and Elinor were to perform at the summer concert, the big
affair of the season, and he could not do his part, and in addition to his
aching, throbbing palm, he had to see her on the platform at the town
hall with another accompanist, a man older than he by four or five years
and the personification of his intense jealousy for years thereafter, even

388

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

when- he and Elmor were married. Why not say' what was trne, staring at
his own face here in the mirror, that he was still jealous in a strange silly
way of Lorenzo Marquis? Marquis, had continued as one of the summer
people, and every ' year William had to endure the ' man’s, complacency
about his own success. Marquis was by now several times ' a ■ millionaire
and had been deeply insulting the last time he came to dinner, he and Ms
fancy third wife.

“Well, the house looks exactly as it used to,” he said, and Elinor had
replied somewhat tartly. “That is why we like it,” which would have been
well enough except that then Marquis said, “I like you—you haven’t
changed, either. William must be easy to live with,” and then with a coarse
look of admiration at the blonde young girl he had recently married he had
said, “I seem to go through ’em fast, don’t I, Tootles?” Tootles had merely
smiled. She was a sleepy beauty, not needing to speak.

That early summer William had been the more angry because the
swelling in his hand had come from within. It was not a wound, he had
not fallen and cut his hand, he had not misused a tool, no knife had
slipped. Simply from within himself somewhere had come this senseless
painful infection which had robbed him of joy with Elinor.

Now in April, years later, he remembered his hand because he and
Elinor were planning an Easter vacation to Atlantic City, where the sun
was said to shine at this season, and he felt, as he had felt long ago, that
something was wrong within him. Certainly the sun did not shine in Ver-
mont. The persistent grey of the sky above his house had got him on
edge. He longed to see the hard clear blue of a sea still cold, a clear blue
sky and clouds, a clean chill wind, people in bright garments of spring,
pacing the boardwalks, an Easter crowd.

He needed the change after a hard winter in which there had been weeks
when he could not come home at all. And while this was going on, the
scandal in the city now growing deeper until he was compelled to probe
into the very sewers of humanity where life was horrible in its fertility, its
growth, its vitality consuming the healthy life of the innocent, a cancer
fastened upon the corporate frame, while all this was going on until he
was sick to the core, something of the same sort was taking place far
away in what he had always liked to think was the singularly pure and
innocent state of Vermont, in the sacred spot wMch belonged to him and
to Elinor, in his own home.

The disturbance centered ridiculously about the black dog, the enormous
animal which Jessica had taken home with her on Christmas Eve, He had
not thought of the beast again, and the holidays had been delightful, the
snow had come, and tor the first time, he recalled, he had enjoyed the
pleasures of being a grandfather. Until now he had been ashamed that he
somewhat resented at his youthful age the fact of a third generation al-
ready springing up around him. He had married early and so had Winsten,
and Madge had been quite willing to have children at once, in the shameless

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

3'89

fasMon young women, did these days. When he and Elinor were , married
the prompt arrival of Winsten a bare twelve months after the ceremony
had been a source of embarrassment to the whole family, implying, quite
unjustly,, that he,: William Asher,' as correct a young man then as ever
lived, was a brute of unleashed passions. Winsten and Madge, on^ the con-
trary, had been proud of their early marriage and had been only the more
so when less than a year later a boy was- bom. At Christmas Madge an-
nounced herself again pregnant, and quite unnecessarily, to every one who
came into the house. ■

“Yes, yes,” she had cried, her round face, pink and white, all laughter,
“Isn*t it wonderful? In July, the twelfth—” There it was again, she named
the very day, implying a dreadful planning, inviting the prurient to imagine
the very night— or day for that matter, for he had once seen something
here in this house which revealed to him that Winsten did not wait decently
until night, but if he felt impelled, simply^ —

He turned away from the mirror where he had been standing. At any
rate, the children had been beautiful in the Christmas snow, the boy in
his scarlet coat and leggings, and the little girl, still a baby and scarcely
able to stagger, in her bright blue costume and the little white fur tippet
she was so proud of, her eyes blue as bits of sky when she stood up on a
snow bank, outlined against the sky itself. He had understood then some-
thing of the wonder of continuing human life, the beauty of it in health
and goodness here in his home, in blessed contrast to the spawn of city
filth. He would at least keep his own in health and goodness, and if every
man did as well, corruption would die.

Yet a corruption had appeared here in Ms own house, an infection from
witMn, with which it seemed he had nothing to do, and yet which could
and did bring unease to the whole.

He frowned, put on Ms coat, and went downstairs to dinner. A pleasant
air of spring pervaded the rooms, although it was far to cold to open the
windows, and there was as usual a fire burning upon the hearth. But Elinor
had put early daffodils in howls upon the table, and she wore a taffeta
dress of April green, not new, he recognized, hut still too cool for winter
and therefore it was sprmg. She sat down, he pushed her chair under her,
and took his own place. There were daffodils between them, very low
in a silver dish, so that he could see her face. There it was, the remote
look, the wistful distance, her cheeks a trifle pale, and her mouth red only
because she had made it so. Something was wrong, but he delayed facing
it. He would have Ms dinner first. He had planned to tell her the exaspera-
tions of his own week, for he could not come home except on Friday
nights, as this was, and he must be back in the city by Tuesday morning.

“When this dirty business is over,” he said somewhat harshly while
Herbert served the soup in small broth bowls, “I shall take a month off
and not go near the city. I am glad we have the few days next week at the

390

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

The plan was that Elinor should meet him and they would leave the
city together, so that actually it would be two weeks and perhaps more
before they^ were home together again. He would miss her until' then, but
these were the last crowded years before his retirement. He had set that
year for himself. After it he would be on call as a consultant for difficult
cases, but he would do no more of the frontal attack that he was doing
now. Younger men, perhaps Edwin, who had decided suddenly to be a
lawyer, would take his place. But he would not take Edwin into the firm
until he had proved himself in another. No nepotism—he loved his family
too well, he was jealous for them, nothing must assail his children before
each attained the top, alone. Marquis had ruined his only son, the boy
was a man of twenty-five, still living on his father’s absurd allowance, five
thousand a month, pretending to write a play, a book, something. Marquis
had provided a salary for him for years on his own radio station, but the
boy did not know it. That had to stop when the employees had revolted.

‘T don’t know whether I ought to leave home just now,” Elinor said.

/Why?” he demanded.

“I don’t lilce the way Susan is behaving,” Elinor said.

Her eyebrows lifted. Herbert was in the room. He had gained weight
absurdly during the last few months, and his house coat wp_ so tight that
he was breathing in short gasps loud enough to be heard. /

William noticed it and smiled slightly. ''Looks like marriage agrees with
you, Herbert,” he said, helping himself to Iamb roast.

Herbert, were he not addressed, could maintain silence for days on
end, but a friendly comment could unlock the sealed gates within him.
He stepped back, set the meat platter upon the silver trivet on the buffet
and spoke, first coughing behind his thick right hand.

“Jessica ain’t going so good,” he said in his rather thin voice.

“No?” William said. It had been a mistake to notice Herbert

“I was thinkin’,” Herbert said, lowering his voice, “that I would like
to have a talk with you and Mrs. Asher tonight, if you have the time.”

William inquired of Elinor silently by a look of secret exasperation,
conveyed by his uplifted eyebrows.

“Oh, certainly,” she said, “as soon as dinner is over, Herbert, while we
are having our coffee. Then you won’t be so late getting home. Jessica
must feel nervous there alone at night until you come,”

“She has the dog,” Herbert said.

No more was said, they finished their dinner and withdrew to the living
room. There comfortably seated William sighed. “I wish we needn’t go
through with this. Have you any idea--”

Elinor interrupted. “I know that things haven’t been right since Christ-
mas. Bertha has cried a good deal in the kitchen, but I have been too much
of a coward to ask why, I’ve even pretended not to notice. But of course
I’ve known all along that it had to come out.”

William grunted as he lit his pipe. Talk about servants was always dis-
tasteful. One paid for peace in the home.

VOICES IN THE' HOUSE

‘‘Whafs wrong with ■ Susaa'?” he demanded. -He had put this off, too,
until the meal was over, but now they might as well face everything ' at
once,

‘*Ifs Pete,” Elinor said, “He has never forgiven her for letting Jessica
have the dog. They are quarreling all the time, and it takes her mind from
her'work.T don’t like the way she looks. She is- actually getting thin,” ■

“i wish she’d forget the fellow.”

“I think she does, too, but she can’t. There’s something—”

Herbert came IE' with the coffee and she broke off. He set the cups
carefully before her on a small table, his big hands trembling slightly, as
even William could see.

“Very well, Herbert,” Elinor said.

The man stood then between them and stepped back somewhat so that
they saw his face, that fat ffabby absurd face, the pinched nose, the small
lipless mouth, the lashless little grey eyes, the stiff black hair which no
brush or lotion would smooth down. A common fellow, William thought,
a shape of ordinary clay, hiding what low passions—

Then came the horror, Herbert did not speak. Instead he began silently
to cry and this with only the slightest disarrangement of his pudgy features.
The tight mouth twitched, out of the little eyes tears rolled down the pasty
cheeks and fell upon the white starched house coat in grey and viscid spots.

“Oh, Herbert, please don’t,” Elinor murmured.

Herbert sniffed and felt for his handkerchief and not finding it, he wiped
his nose with the back of his hand. William looked away, resisting the
thought that he ought to offer Herbert his own clean handkerchief. He
could not do it. Instead he gazed into the fire while Herbert went on
sniffing until he was able to speak, sobbing short gasps.

“I give her— everything, Mrs. Asher!”

“I’m sure you do,” Elinor said, comforting while William sat motionless
gazing into the fire.

“Two vacuum cleaners, one upstairs, Mrs. Asher, on account of she
ain’t strong and it was heavy liftin’ the machine here up and down—”

“Very kind of you,” Elinor said crisply.

“She don’t like the livin’ room rug, she wants an all over like this one
here— two hundred dollars, Mrs, Asher, ma’am.”

“I hope she will appreciate it,” Elinor said.

The sniffling began again. William glanced swiftly and saw the massive
face trembling in a jelly of pain.

“She won’t let me come near her—”

Ah, here it was— the eternal accusation between man and wife!

“Night after night-my health’s gettin’ ruined-”

Elinor took hold resolutely. “It’s very strange. Does she give a reason?”

“No reason, Mrs. Asher. Just says she— can’t.”

“I simply don’t know how to advise you, Herbert,” Elinor said.

“No, ma’am, nor you, sir, I don’t expect it. I used to handle it myself
before. She hasn’t no real stren’th.”

392

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Before what?” William asked, suddenly turning Ms head.

“Before she got the dog,” Herbert sobbed. “It's that beast, sir, it lays
between us on the fioor—she would have them twin beds before she’d marry
me. He lays there, ready to jump at me—she just calls him—”

“What a dreadful thing!” Elinor whispered.

Herbert stood, his heavy head drooping, sniffling unevenly, trembling
from head to foot.

“Why don’t you get rid of the dog?” William demanded. Here was a
hideous thing to go through with after dinner in his own house! His quick
imagination, the bane of his soul, uncontrollable, created the bedroom
scene, the lustful man, the terrified woman, that red-eyed beast between,
Its scruffl standing.

“She says if I do, she’ll— leave me.” Herbert’s voice rose into a squeak
of final agony.

“That’s ridiculous,” Elinor said in a voice of hearty common sense.
“She’ll probably respect you for it.”

“I daren’t— take the chance. She’s queer in some ways you w’'ouldn’t
expect,”

Elinor sat up in her chair. “Herbert, stop crying, please. We can’t dis-
cuss tMs sensibly while you stand there looking like that. If you cry before
Jessica, it will really make her despise you. No woman could bear it.”

She spoke cruelly, her voice hard and clear, but it was relief to hear
it like a knife of steel, cutting through the mush of the clogged atmosphere
of Herbert.

It did no good to Herbert, however. “Hankishiffl,” he muttered in a
strangled voice and rushed from the room.

Neither of them spoke for minutes. Then Elinor poured the coffee.
“Sugar?” she asked.

Sometimes William wanted sugar, sometimes he did not.

“Clear and black,” he said and took the cup.

She had broken the brunt of it and he should say something.

“A horrible revelation,” he said drily. “Revolting, repulsive, it should
never have been made. We can do nothing about it.”

Elinor did not answer at once. Then she said, “I do feel sorry for
Jessica.” ... . .

^ He was surprised, for he had thought until now that she had some impa-
tience with Jessica, an unrecognized jealousy he might have said, strictly to
himself, because Jessica was pretty and because she had seen this young
and pretty woman put her hands on Edwin’s shoulders, appealing, in Jes-
sica’s own way, to every man, something which Elinor herself had never
done and could never have done simply because of her own straightfor-
ward soul, and not because she did not know, as of course she did, that
her own Mgh beauty was far beyond anything, even now, that Jessica
possessed.

“Still, you know,” he remonstrated.

VOICES, IN THE HOUSE

393

‘^Hiere’s no ‘still’ about it,” Elinor broke in sharply. “I know exactly
what you are going to say and 1 am surprised at .you, ■William,, for you so
seldG,iii.say what any man would say.”

■^‘What was I about tO: say?” he inquired with purposeful mildness.

‘‘You were' going to say that after all Herbert is her husband, that it is
right and natural that he should expect , to have sexual intercourse, and,
what does a man marry for?”

He was too honest to , manufacture anything else. It was true that he
had been about to say this, although certainly not in such bold words,.

“You put it very crudely,” he said with dignity.

“I put it as it is,” Elinor said. “It is a crude business.”

“But the dog—” he protested.

“Fm glad Jessica has the dog,” Elinor said almost rudely.

He was amazed at her. He put down his coffee cup and gazed at her.
This aspect he had never seen and he did not like it. Where might a
man find security if not with his wife after twenty-five years of marriage? A
woman ought not to reveal new aspects after that. It was unfair, disturbing,
upsetting the very citadel of the home.

“My dear,” he said, “you sound bitter.”

“I feel bitter,” Elinor said vigorously. She poured herself a cup of coffee,
and it occurred to him that all this time she had not lifted her head to look
at him,

“Why?” he demanded looking at her bent head.

“That Hefbert,” she exclaimed, “so soft, so fat, so demanding! I know
exactly how Jessica feels. Every woman does.”

This was frightening. She made it personal, she dragged it here between
them, something obscene, the sort of thing a decent man never faces, cer-
tainly not in himself.

“Let’s not discuss it,” he said.

They sat in silence then, drinking their coffee.

Ail this distracted William’s mind from Susan, and it was only when
Elinor spoke of their child again a week later at Atlantic City that he
remembered there was also Peter Dobbs. They were sitting in a warm
corner of the sandy beach, sheltered from an inconsiderate west wind by
the boardwalk. It was too cold to think of going into the water, which
nevertheless looked temptingly clear and mild, the surf small and guileless.
He was not a strong swimmer and he did not like the crushing surf of
summertime; It was one of the lesser cruelties of nature, he thought, that
in the winter when the water was too cold for the human frame the sea was
often smooth the waves subdued at least when the sky was cloudless as
today it was, whereas in summer some tempestuous aspect of the moon
compelled the tides to restlessness. Eve, made from the rib of Adam, was
only the legend of the perverse and female moon torn from the side of the
newly created globe of billions of years ago, and the gaping wound of the

394

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH'

Pacific basin, raw basalt at the bottom, was still as unhealed as man himself.
And here was the moon as he had seen it last night, whirling above the
yearning earth, remote and unreachable, never again to be joined, and yet
pulling the earth’s tides toward herself, only to reject them again and again
in the ceaseless rise and fall of the rhythms of untiring creation.

Lying on his back, his eyes closed to the sun, he felt those rhythms in
his own being and he reached for Elinor’s hand. She gave it wiilingly and
he pressed it against his cheek, a miracle today as it had been years ago;
not the same, for the hand had changed, grown harder, perhaps, certainly
more firm, but still his Elinor’s hand.

‘‘Susan wants to come down,” Elinor said.

“Did she telephone?” he asked.

“Yes, this morning while you were still asleep. She wants to come down
tomorrow. She says she has to talk to us.”

He sighed and pressing her hand he let it fall to the sand. “Then I sup-
pose she must.”

“I think so.”

It was extraordinary how children could continue to intrude. One ex-
pected it when they were babies, and Susan would have been the first to
insist upon her womanhood, did he call her still his child. Nevertheless for
him the carefree morning was over, though it was two hours until they
could go into the hotel for lunch. He could not feel alone with Elinor any
more until Susan had come and gone, had made known her new problem,
whatever it was, for the lives of the young were, it seemed, thorny with
inexplicable and insoluble problems. The entire web of his law practice,
fraught with the crimes underlying the life of the greatest city in the world,
was not as agitating as the militant demand of the problems of his three
grown children, Winsten, the young father, Edwin, the lover, and Susan,
the eternal female. Or perhaps it was only that he could get up from his
desk, close the door of his city office and walk away, whereas these three
who were his children, inescapably his own being, continued in him and
were forever in his home, their childish ghosts persistent in his very blood.
He could no more escape them than he could escape himself.

Nevertheless, he was not prepared even by a day and a night of won-
dering what was the matter now with Susan. She appeared the next morn-
ing, nearer noon than dawn, whirling up to the hotel entrance as he could
see from the window where he had gone to examine his second best tie,
a dark blue and gray stripe of which he was fond but which he suspected
of becoming threadbare. He was not a vain man but Susan was critical of
him as a possession. There in the hotel driveway he saw her small dark
red convertible, which she had teased out of him as .an early graduation
present, and to his unutterable horror be saw Peter Dobbs leaping over the
door, one long leg after the other, then opening the door for Susan.

“Elinor!” So he shouted through the connecting bathroom. “She’s
brought that fellow from the Ozarks with her!”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

395.

®*Ght no!” Elinor cried back, but she came, looking quite pretty In her
pink silk slip, and he wondered why it was that the face of a slender- woman
must fade first. Elinor in her pink slip was otherwise- still a young girl
\ She stood behind the curtain, drawing it across her as a screen, and he
saw the nape of her neck, the little silvery curls there, threaded with blonde
hairs. He, remembered that when they were first married the little pale
gold curls on the nape of her neck were irresistible, and he bent forward
suddenly and kissed them again now.

She turned to smile at him brightly. “Now, William, we must get
dressed quickly. She’ll be running up here—”

“Of course!” he grumbled. He considered explaining to her that the kiss
he had given her was not the beginning of something at this moment,
but a souvenir from their bridal morning. Another time he might have ex-
plained, but the fear of Susan bringing that great black-haired fellow up-
stairs made explanation impossible. Besides, Elinor should have known. But
she still suspected him, as he supposed all women suspected all men, of
the potential and instantaneous passion which he had not known how to
manage in the early days, but which now, alas, or perhaps luckily, he was
quite used to curbing, subduing or allowing, according to the faint hints
she permitted to escape her. There was nothing actually stereotyped about
their love. She could and did often surprise him. But it was a cat and mouse
business, and sometimes he felt that more often than he knew he was the
mouse.

Susan was by now actually at the door, but Elinor was dressed and
looking composed, although the top button of her blouse was unbuttoned
as usual, and he felt sensitive about that black beast of the mountains
observing such a detail. To Susan it would not have mattered, but he
preserved the jealousy of his generation and yet still he could not mention
it to Elinor, although she was so calm he guessed that she knew what he
was feeling and would have none of it.

There was no time, however. The door burst open and they stood there,
the young and healthy creatures, gay with their news which was obvious
to anyone looking at them. They were in love, some sort of love at least,
and William felt his scalp priclde. Elinor was looking at them strangely,
her blue eyes intense.

“Mother and Dad!” Susan cried dramatically, “Pete and I are engaged.
We thought we’d better tell you,”

“Come in,” William said, “I should think you had. When did it
happen?”

Susan shrieked laughter. “Oh, Dad, as though it just happened!”

They came in, and he noticed that Elinor said nothing. She sat down
on one of the two stuffed chairs, and the two young creatures sat on the
narrow sofa. Entirely shameless, Fete wrapped his long right arm about
Susan, and she caught his right hand under her left arm and held it
pressed to her waist

396

AMERICAN , TRIPTSfCH

such a relief to have it over/’ she cried m the same excited voice.

didn’t really know my own mind until he asked mCj at last, day before
yesterday. I did and. I didn’t. When I thought he never was .going to ask
me, 1 thought I didn’t The rest of the time I did.”

William listened to this and for the first time since he saw his daughter
born, red with her recent efforts and rebellious apparently even against
birth, he found her repulsive. The nakedness of the triumphant female
nowadays was nothing less than repulsive. What hidden aspect of Elinor
had taken this modern shape in their daughter? Elinor at least was modest.

‘Why don’t one of you say something?” Susan demanded.

William refused to answer this but Elinor was heroic.

“How nice,” she murmured through pallid lips.

Susan and Pete burst into a duet of loud laughter. “Oh Mother,” Susan
sighed, drunk with laughter. “Isn’t she priceless, Pete? Isn’t she wonder-
ful? Nice! Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah,” Pete grunted. His black eyes were glittering bright; for the first
time William saw him awake.

He felt an immense anger. “I wonder if you two have any imagination,”
he said sharply. “I wonder if, short of waiting a quarter of a century, you
can imagine how it feels when a child who has absorbed time and funds—
not to mention love— suddenly turns up with a perfect stranger to whom
she announces herself engaged. Does it occur to you,” he went on magis-
terially, gazing at his daughter, “whether we might perhaps ask, as a return
for benefits received, that we be given some opportunity of acquaintance
with the stranger before we are compelled to accept him as our son-in-
law?”

The sound of his voice was Impressive, even in his own ears. He had
never heard it more so when he pleaded his cases before obdurate judges.

Susan looked puzzled. She opened her dark eyes wide, a trick he re-
membered from her childhood, when, compelled in due course to reprove
her, she had looked up at him with these same large eyes. She leaned for-
ward in the circle of Pete’s arm.

“Are you serious, Dad?” So she inquired, wondering, as he could see,
quite genuinely.

He was about to protest his seriousness when Elinor broke in.

“Of course he’s not serious. It’s a shock and he doesn’t know what to say.
It’s none of our business. If you choose Pete, it’s welcome to you, Pete.”

She smiled her warmest and most charming smile and William stared at
her, stirred by her reasonless desertion. Had he not been protecting her?
What did it matter to him whom the children chose? He was used now to
doing without them. This Susan was not the small dark exquisite child, so
plump and fragrant, who used to curl into his arms before she went to
bed. She had left his house, in spirit, long ago. Her heart was not there. He
had read of countries where the daughter was never considered a perma-
nent member of the family because when she married she belonged by the

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

397

heart to a strange man’s family. Therefore why educate her and why
spend upon, her the treasures of parental love? He recognized this, sympathy
with dim guilt as a subterranean jealousy which disgusted him. .At what
age, he inquired of, himself, did the beast in a .man finally surrender un-
conditionally?

“What are you thinking about, Dad?” Susan asked curiously.

“Nothing that you would understand,” he retorted. He gathered himself
together with effort. '

“Has he an income?” he inquired, not looking at Pete.

“Gas station,” Pete said amiably.

■“He owns' It,” Susan said proudly.

It was the second blow. A gas station? For this he had tenderly nurtured
Ms daughter, had even paid for lessons on the violin, enduring without
articulate complaint the primary years of wailing discord, until she was at
last very good indeed. “I suppose you know,” her music master had said
to him only a few months ago, “your daughter can do about as she likes
with music. She is very near the professional level.”

With frightful control he put the next question gently. “Where is this gas
station?”

“Highway near my home,” Pete said. “Lots of tourists to the Ozarks
nowadays.”

Elinor spoke with pale lips. “ShaU you like to go so far away, Susan?”

“Yes,” Susan said robustly. “I shall love it.”

There was nothing much to be said after that. Elinor, who had envied
the parents of Winsten’s wife the long pleasure of a carefully arranged
wedding for a bride, was silenced. She was probably thinking, as he was,
William imagined. What was the use of a beautiful and expensive wedding,
when the next step was to a gas station?

“Oughtn’t we to have lunch?” Elinor asked. She glanced at the small
circle of diamonds on her wrist that held the watch he had given her upon
their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. “The dining room will be crowded
if we wait.”

“We’re starved,” Susan agreed. “At least I am, and Pete is always
hungry.”

“Always kin eat,” Pete a^eed, unfolding himself from the sofa.

So they went downstairs, and William was glad not to be alone with the
strangers. Susan was a stranger, too, he had lost her finally this morning,
and all that he had left was the ghost of the child she had been, that and
nothing more. He sat down at a small round table at which they were all
crowded, and examined the menu carefully. Rejecting the array of seafood
and steaks he chose baked beans and brown bread and ate them, after a
long wait, in complete silence, listening not to the chattering rise and fail
of the voices around him but to the rising thunder of the surf outside. The
tide was coming in.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

The moment William reached home on Friday, as though he had not
been disturbed enough by Susan, Herbert waylaid him in the haU.

'T’d like a word or two with you, sir, if it*s convenient.’^

It was not convenient. William was tired, the week in his office had
been peculiarly exhausting after his absence, and he had wondered on the
way home whether he were getting too old for the grind. All those hours
Herbert had sat in the chauffeur’s seat, speechless. Now liberated by his
white house coat he wanted time from his employer. Time, William felt
rebeliiously, was the one treasure he had left. Money was of little worth,
half of his wage went to supporting a government he could not approve,
and his children had left him. Time, and especially time with Elinor, was
what he could not spare. But the demand of one’s inferiors could not be
refused, as he would have refused curtly enough any man who was his
equal. He hired secretaries for nothing else than to protect him from re«
quests for his time, but at home he was defenseless.

“Very well, Herbert,” he said with grim patience. “We had better go
into the library at once. We have fifteen or twenty minutes before dinner.”

Herbert followed with noiseless and solemn tread and when William had
sat down he closed the door and stood against it. There he began sound-
lessly to weep as he had before, his big flat face quivering and trembling
and his tight lips twitching. This could only mean Jessica again!

“Come—come,” William said, repelled anew and trying not to be
impatient.

Herbert sniffed stealthily, searched for his handkerchief with the same
stealthy air, found it and wiped his face.

“You know the black dog, sir?”

“Yes, I remember the beast,” William replied.

“Well, that dog, sir, it seems she’s got to care for it more than any earthly
creetur, more than her mother or even me, her lawful husband.”

“Sit down,” William said.

Herbert turned and locked the door. Then he tiptoed three steps forward
and sat down on the edge of one of the straight oaken chairs. His flabby
jowls trembled again and William looked away.

“That black dog,” Herbert said, clearing his throat, “bit a little kid last
week. It was a farmer’s kid next to our farm. She come over to git some
eggs. They take eggs off us onct a week. She’s about seven or eight years
old. The dog bit her in the thigh. It wasn’t the first time, either. He bit her
onct before on the hand.”

“I trust the dog isn’t mad,” William said gravely.

Herbert did not heed the interruption. He went on, Ms voice dreadful
and whispering. “I told her-Jessica, that is-that we ought not to keep a
dog that bites kids. When we have a kid of our own-did I tell you she
was expecting?”

“No,” William said.

“Yes,” Herbert said, “she’s due in June. I told her we ought to get rid

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

399

of that dog when it bit the kid the first time. She wouldn’t hear to it and
I let it go. She was pregnant and I thought it was a notion. Now the dog
has bit the kid again, and the kid’s father says hell sue me. It’s a real deep
bite. The kid is in the hospital to get it cauterized. Can I be sued?”

*Tt depends,” William said cautiously.

^‘Onwhat?”

®Xet me consider it for a few days,” William said.

*The kid’s father is liable to sue me for a thousand dollars maybe,”
Herbert said.

'T’l! let you know,” William said. It was absurd that he should take
his priceless time for a dog bite. He felt his anger rise against Pete, who
had brought the savage beast to his house and now he could not be rid
■of.it

Herbert wadded the handkerchief into a ball and dabbed at one eye
and the other. “You probably think it’s queer I cry, sir.” His voice slid into
a hysterical squeak. “It’s not just the dog now. It’s her. I don’t know what
to make of Jessica, sir.”

“What’s the matter now with Jessica?” William asked, not wanting to
know. He glanced at the locked door. A moment more and he would get
up and unlock it.

“She’s turning on her mother to hate her, like,” Herbert said, his voice
falling to a whisper. “We can’t make it out. Her mother considers her like
the apple of her eye, you might say, if you understand that saying, sir.
The old lady spends her spare time with us, naturally, and we have fixed
up a room for her upstairs, a nice corner room, which is only right, since
the house is hers until after she dies, it’s in her will to come to Jessica and
me, of course, after that, but I had expected to have the old lady with
us when she gets too old for the job here which I figure might be any
time, and then I figured maybe Jessica and I could work here and the
old lady could take care of the kids we might have by then. I don’t want
a lot of kids, two is plenty, and then I thought I’d let Jessica get herself
tied, which she wanted to do in the very beginning.”

“Tied?” William inquired.

“Her toobes,” Herbert explained, “so she won’t get pregnant You can
get a doctor to do it, if she’s nervous. She is nervous and that’s the truth.
The doctor says so himself,”

“Indeed,” William said, once more deeply revolted.

“I wouldn’t hear to its being done right away,” Herbert went on. Voice
and face were solemn and the tears drying on his cheeks had left the
glistening wake of snails.

“No— no,” William said unhappily. “I feel sorry for Bertha,” he added.
“Someone should talk with Jessica. Perhaps Mrs. Asher will do so.”

“Would she?” Herbert asked eagerly. “That’s what I wanted to know
could I ask. It would bring Jessica to her senses, like. She’s that fond of
Mrs. Asher’s family.”

400

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

''Very we!!,” William said. He got up determined to unlock tlie door,
but Herbert hastened toward it first. He turned the key and stood impres-
sively holding the door wide, while Williain passed through, bestowing a
slight nod of acknowledgment.

Upstairs he found Elinor putting dried lavender from last year’s garden
between the garments in her bureau drawers.

They kissed, and he sniffed the clean fragrance. How many women,
he wondered, put lavender between their garments nowadays instead of
some French sachet? He disliked all French perfumes, though once he had
thought them enchanting. Vermont had made the change. French perfumes
were foreign here.

“Has Bertha complained to you of Jessica’s behavior?” he asked.

“She has been grumpy,” Elinor said, “but she has not mentioned
Jessica.”

“Herbert tells me Jessica has turned completely against Bertha, He took
me into the library and locked the door and confided to me a mixture of
complaints. I won’t go into them all, but somehow I promised that you
would speak to Jessica.”

“Oh dear,” Elinor said.

“Fm very sorry,” William said. “I don’t know how it happened. I wanted
to get rid of him, I suppose.”

“Well, Fd better hear Jessica’s side of it first,” Elinor said sighing.
“Bertha gets so upset and then she goes to bed. I can’t have her going to
bed this weekend. Edwin is coming home tomorrow.”

“What for?” Were they never to be alone?

“Have you forgotten it is his spring vacation?”

He had forgotten. Now that Winsten was fairly stabilized in Boston in
his own small house with wife and children, now that Susan had gone
blithely to the Ozarks to visit Pete’s family, for that was where she was,
an unthinkable liberty, but she had laughed when he suggested some sort
of a chaperone, he had supposed that he and Elinor could live in some
peace for the next few weeks. He had even thought of persuading her
to go to New York with him for some of the last theater of the season.

“I think Vera will decide this week whether she’ll marry Edwin,” Elinor
was saying.

“It is high time,” William said. He wanted to get them all settled, all
his children.

“Wouldn’t it be nice,” Elinor now said, “if we had robots in the house
instead of servants?”

He sank down upon a chair. “Robots? They’d develop some devilish
temperament of their own. What is Herbert or Jessica but a handful of
chemicals mixed with a lot of water? It’s the proportion. When everything
is all in some damned relationship to everything else, something new
emerges, a creature, a personality. It’s fission. Even the atom won’t explode
until the combination is just right—”

Elinor stood listening, her arms hanging at her sides. “You’re low, aren’t

your

“Peace,” , William said. “It’s all I want.”

A fine strange thing, he thought, the way human beings destroyed their
own peace while most earnestly desiring peace above all else, and destroyed
it in secret subterranean ways, obstinately maintaining their own wilfulness,
as Jessica was doing, the upheaval in that small farm dwelling he had
never seen reaching even into his own stately house. And why had he and
Elinor not the courage to repudiate these creatures who disturbed them
so causelessly? He watched Elinor as she moved about the room and under-
stood her as he understood himself, that neither of them had the courage
to be ruthless. They could not, out of something that was not weakness,
he believed, cut off a human being who was helpless within their periph-
ery, as surely Jessica was. Jessica was a child, innocent and gentle, between
the two monoliths of Bertha and Herbert. She must be rescued, she could
be rescued.

“Cousin Emma said that she wished she had taken Jessica to New York
with her, before that marriage,” he said suddenly.

Elinor sat down to ponder. “It might have been a good thing, but it is
too late. Jessica is married.”

“I have a feeling that we ought to get together today and see exactly
what her circumstances are,” he said. “Fd like to have the matter settled
in my mind. It is very diffieuit to deal with Herbert when he stands and
blubbers.”

“He’s disgusting,” Elinor said vehemently. “A man in tears turns my
stomach.”

William found himself moved to defense. “I suppose there are times
when a man must weep also.”

“Weeping should be done in secret,” Elinor said.

It occurred to him again that indeed he had rarely seen her weep and
not for years. He asked with intense difiadence and after a long moment,
“Do you weep in secret, my dearest?”

She was evasive as always when he approached the depths between
them, which was the Vermont in her, he supposed, or perhaps only the
Winsten, so long in Vermont. “I learned long ago not to weep about any-
thing,” she said.

“Did you once?” he pressed.

“Perhaps,” she said almost with indifference, “when I was younger,
before I understood life.”

He went no further, a natural fear or shyness preventing him, or per-
haps only the reluctance of the aging to turn up one’s own past, as buried,
as irretrievable, as the centuries before one’s birth.

He got up with energy enough to dismiss it all, saying, “At any rate,
let us go and see Jessica.”

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Shall I tell Bertha?” Elinor asked.

They looked at each other nncertainly and he laughed. “We are absurds
the matter is of no importance, the quarrels of servants, and we feel as
though we were discussing the affairs of nations. Teh her by all. means
and what if she does go to bed? Well do for ourselves.”

His hardihood decided her. “You must come with me, for she is afraid
of you at least and she thinks nothing of me, because she saw me the
day I was born.”

They went together down the stairs and into Bertha’s kitchen where she
stood before the stove, her thick legs planted wide, upholding the mountain
of her body. She did not turn her head when they came In, and their
courage dwindled. But William felt Elinor quail first, and he summoned
his remote sense of humor. What, must two educated resourceful cultivated
persons be cowed by the mass simplicity of a Bertha?

“Bertha,” he said decisively, “Mrs. Asher and I have been talking about
Jessica. We would like to go and visit her today and see why she seems
so unhappy with Herbert.”

Bertha began to weep, not turning her head and continuing to stir gravy
in a skillet. Her huge frame quivered, haunches, shoulders, the massive
neck. “I losted my home,” she moaned. She dabbed her eyes with her huge
red hand. “She’s turned against me, mine own childt! She don’t vant I
shouldt come home even for Sunday, no, and she says she don’t vant I
shouldt come home on birt’dayss, and not on Christmas yet. She tellt
Herbert I heated her hard venn she vass liddle.”

She turned slowly, her big face a wreckage of sorrow, she demanded
of Elinor, “Didt I effer beat her. Miss Elinor, you tell me, only venn she
vendt into your bans, the parlors, and like she vass one of you? Ya, I see
her, and so I muss beat her. It iss not her haus, I tellt her, you shtay in
kitchen vere we belongs, not im haus. Only so I beat her, because she
dondt lissen. She goes und she goes, sitting on welwet chairs, playing pianos,
looking in mirrows, so I beat her.”

William listening, caught the gleam of a thread of reason, a quick
illumination. This then was the explanation of Jessica posing before the
mirrors. Even as a child she had begun to live the dream of herself in the
big house, not belonging to the kitchen and therefore not, oh never, to
Bertha, the cook, and scarcely to Heinrich the butler. She was somebody
else, a lovely girl, somebody perhaps even belonging to the family who
really lived in the big house, who owned it, certainly as she could not
except through dreams. His sensitive mind, his swift imagination, the quali-
ties which underlay his work as a lawyer and made him understand why
crimes were commited enlightened him now, and he was warm with pity
for the little child beaten for her dreams, incurable dreams which she still
wove. He was glad that he had not told Elinor about the scenes before

.e mirror..

Bertha was talking through thick sobs. “Can I let her get out of kitchens

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

403

and maybe Misses Winsten fire me and' Heinrich? Only so I beat: her,
maybe ew, drei, vier times, not effery day like she tells it now. She tells it to
Herbert and he lofs her so silly he beliefs it He don’t want me in mine
own nieder,”

^‘Herbert?” Elinor repeated, mystified.

“Ya, him,’" Bertha said, and seizing her large apron she wept into it,
the gravy spoon uplifted like a signal above her bent head.

‘We will go and see for ourselves,” William said sternly.

“Don’t cry, Bertha,” Elinor said. She patted the heavy shoulder. “Oh,
please don’t cry! You’ll always have a home here, Bertha.”

William looked at Elinor, aghast. She had committed them! She had
promised an eternal home to Bertha, the aging, pig-headed, tenderhearted,
bad-tempered old woman who was slave and tyrant together. Aghast they
stole from the kitchen, and faced each other in the living room.

“Still, we can’t turn Bertha out in the streets, William,” Elinor said.

“No,” he agreed. That was the trouble with life. The old and the poor,
the ignorant, the helpless, the young, even a beast, could not just be turned
out into the streets when they became nuisances. They had to be sheltered,
though under one’s own roof.

They were diverted at this moment, if not cheered, by the early arrival
of Edwin, neat and debonair in his usual fashion. It occurred to William
to recognize now the value in this second son, the calmness of his young
face, the competence of his manner, the composure unusual for one so
young.

“Let us take Edwin and Vera with us when we go to see Jessica,” he
suggested, turning to Elinor.

He explained briefly, and Edwin nodded. “It sounds queer, I’d like to go.
I’ve always been fond of Jessica, in a way. She’s never seemed quite like
a servant. If she wants to leave Herbert, she might come to Vera and me
when we’re married.”

Elinor clasped her hands in joy. “Has Vera really decided? Oh, Edwin!”

He nodded. “She really has. She decided last night. She said she wanted
it settled before she came today.”

“Oh, darling,” Elinor said fondly. She seldom kissed her grown children
but now she went to this reliable son and kissed his cheek. “I am so happy.
I dearly love Vera.”

He blushed, his blue eyes shone, he embraced her warmly. “She adores
you both,” he said, his calm young voice cracking a little. “I am really
bringing you another daughter.”

The affair of Jessica disappeared in the mists of their immediate content
and they allowed him to leave them again almost immediately that he
might fetch Vera.

“Now we must wait until tomorrow to see Jessica,” Elinor said happily.
“I wonder where Edwin’s wedding will be? I suppose they’ll want it in
Manchester, in the Episcopal church.”

'■ ‘‘Just so Vera’s father doesn’t want it in Ms hankj”' William said with
letooihg humor. A happy marriage was a good' omen for the whole family,
a ' young and happy marriage, as his and Elinor’s had been and had
continued' to be, even when youth was gone. , Unusual sentiment ' warmed
his heart and he felt moved to turn and take Ms wife In Ms arms and kiss
her full on the mouth.

‘‘Why, William,” she cried.

“I suddenly remember myself when young,” he explained.

She wavered for only a moment and then she yielded gracefully to Ms
arms and returned his kiss, without ardor but with full consent.

Thus the next morning after an evening made delightful by the tactful
tenderness of Edwin, who somehow made his parents believe that he was
in no haste for them to retire early, they rose from the breakfast table
and prepared to visit Jessica. Vera liked the early morning, she never lay
abed after the fashion of Susan, and she had already taken an early walk
with Edwin before breakfast. Fresh as a single-petaled rose, her straight
blonde hair bright and smooth, her fair skin delicately pink upon her
cheeks, she presented as nearly a perfect picture of the desirable daughter-
in-law as William could imagine. He could imagine, too, exactly the sort
of wife she would make for Edwin, a loyal, faithful, steadfast woman,
pretty enough to be pleasant and not so pretty as to be dangerous under
any circumstances.

Her well-cut blue suit was smart enough, expensive of course, but worth
the money and it would wear well. Everything about Vera would wear
well. There was notMng sportive in her. Though she had given her promise
to Edwin only day before yesterday, a scant thirty-six hours ago, yet already
there was about her the air of the faithful wife. He was glad that Edwin
deserved her. Vera was too pure a gold to be given into hands less honor-
able than Edwin’s. It was all very suitable, and this was perhaps praise
enough.

They set forth in the old grey car, the country car they called it, Edwin
driving, and after half an hour or so, they left the macadam and turned
down a rutted dirt road, wMch led them some miles across a low mountain
into a spreading valley. Herbert and Bertha had seen them off, Bertha on
the verge of recurring tears, and Herbert giving solemn directions regard-
ing Clayton Corners where anybody except himself would take the wrong
turn, five roads meeting together as they did, the center of a star.

“You take the worst road, sir. I been aimin’ to get that road fixed but
the township is short of funds— always is.”

The worst road was entirely obvious and they chose it unerringly for
another five miles to draw up before the house which they recognized from
Herbert’s description,

“We must be careful of that miserable cur,” William exclaimed, peering
from the window.

AM35RICAN' TKIFTYCH

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

The dog, however, was chained. They saw it at once. The immense black
frame crawled out of the large kennel, it rushed the length of the thick
iron chain, roaring at them, bellowing until the hills echoed.

Almost immediately Jessica opened the front door and came out to meet
them. She was beautifully dressed, pregnant as they could see, but the
soft wool stuff of her suit, a full skirt, a smart little jacket falling over her
waist, concealed the harshness of her shape. Her face was thin, her blue
eyes were ethereal and ethereal was her smile as she held out her hands
to them.

'^Oh, how welcome you are,” she cried in her pretty voice. '1 fee! as
though you were my own family, coming to see me at last!”

She came forward. Elinor kissed her upon a sudden impulse and Wil-
liam found himself holding both her hands. Vera and Edwin stood to one
side, waiting, and Jessica turned to them.

‘‘Mr. Edwin,” she said uncertainly.

“You remember Vera,” Edwin began.

“Oh, I do,” Jessica interrupted him. “I do indeed remember! It is good
of you to come.”

“We are to be married,” Edwin said somewhat abruptly.

Jessica looked bewildered for a moment, almost hurt.

“Married? Are you—” she hesitated and laughed softly. “Of course you
are, I forget you are a man. I always think of you as a boy.”

Jessica’s sweet blue eyes lingered wistfully upon Vera’s quiet face. “And
how old are you?”

“I am a year younger than Edwin,” Vera said quietly.

“Oh, that is so wise,” Jessica cried softly. “It is always wise to be younger
—not too much, but just a year or so. Come in, come in—”

They did not know what to make of her manner, she threw a light
contrived fascination over all she said and did, her narrow hands moved
here and there, now at her throat, now at her hair, and she smiled inces-
santly, a bright and brittle glitter about her face, her great blue eyes
shining. She was like a foreigner, come from a country they did not know,
whose customs were not theirs, whose thoughts they could not fathom even
through the common language.

“Come in— come in,” she repeated in a sort of floating ecstasy, and she
led the way into the house, a farmhouse, but strangely unlike what Wil-
liam had imagined. The front door gave into a narrow hall from which
a straight flight of steps led up to the second floor. The conventional rooms,
parlor to the left, dining room to the right, opened from the hall. They
entered the parlor, and William looked about him, seeing vaguely familiar
settings. Suddenly he understood the strangeness of the room. In her way
this astounding creature Jessica had tried to imitate his own home! Be-
tween the windows opposite the door hung the mirror, the two wall candle-
sticks, underneath which was a really good imitation of his walnut
escritoire, at either end of the room were the tali book cabinets, not so

406

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

large, of course, as Ms and certainly not antiques. Upon the mantelpiece
were, china ignres, though not Dresden. His eyes met Elinor’s and they
exchanged amazement and pity.

“What a pretty room,” Vera said.

■ “I don’t like the carpet,” Jessica said eagerly. “It’s a cheap thing. The
one I want costs two hundred dollars. Herbert says we can’t afford it”
She laughed, her eyes suddenly diamond-hard. “But I’ll get it! I don’t
worry any more about such things. Would you like to go upstairs and see
all the rooms? The house is much too small, of course, but we are planning
to build, and then this house will just be used for the servants. I have the
place chosen, up on the MIL”

She parted the net curtains hanging between the blue velveteen draperies.

“I want to see you, not the house,” Elinor said with sudden firmness.
“Sit down, Jessica.”

“Vera and I will walk about outside,” Edwin said. They had not sat
down.

“Oh no, indeed,” Jessica cried in her highest most silvery tones. “You
must sit down, Edwin. There is nothing hidden from you. I have never
had secrets from you, have I? Never!”

Edwin, astonished, sat down. They ail sat down, bemused by unreality.

“When do you expect the baby?” Elinor asked quietly,

“Oh, I don’t know,” Jessica said. Her strangely innocent face turned
upon them radiantly. “I don’t think about it, Mrs. Asher, It seems so useless,
just having children. Children have children have children have children
—isn’t it all just useless? Over and over and over and over! And what is
there here for children? No streets to walk upon, no shop windows, no
movies, no drugstores, nothing to amuse them. So I just don’t think about
it” ■

Elinor interrupted tMs. “Your mother tells me you have quarrels with
her.”

Jessica flung up her hands. They were very wMte and thin, the nails
painted a shell pink. Who, William wondered, washed the dishes and
scrubbed the floors? Herbert perhaps, fatuous as he was, or Bertha, on
the rare days when she came home. Only now she was not to be allowed
to come.

“Indeed I don’t quarrel with Mamma,” Jessica declared. “I have simply
said I will never see her any more, as long as I live, that’s aH.”

“You are living in her house,” William said abruptly.

“Only imtil we build upon the Mil,” she said brightly. “Then this house
will just be used for the servants.”

“Your mother?” he asked grimly.

“Oh no,” Jessica said. “I will never see her again.” She leaned forward,
her cheeks suddenly scarlet. “I don’t suppose you ever knew, Mr. Asher,
but my mother used to beat me terribly. She is a very cruel woman.”

VOICES IN THE. HOUSE

407

. ^'Jessica, I don’t believe you,” Elinor said, ''In ail the years that Bertha
has been in our house I have, never heard anybody else say that”

"That’s because you are the family,” Jessica said and then,, words burst
from the pent spring within' her, her eyes widened, the lids snapping, as '
she loo,ked from one face to the other. She. rushed on, the clearly articu-
lated words like a ripple of failing crystals. "She used to beat me and
hold her great ist over my mouth so I couldn’t cry! She beat me until I
felt as though my very bones were split and my poor father was helpless.
He would stand there wringing his hands, he would get down on his knees,
speechless, because he didn’t want the family to hear, and just on the other
side of the pantry door, you were all sitting in riches and safety, while
I was being beaten, and all in such quiet—”

The terrible drama was displayed before them in the frightful intensity
of Jessica’s being. She flamed, she quivered, her eyes were wild and im-
mense, her voice as edged as the high string of a violin.

"I cannot believe it,” Elinor insisted.

"Oh, you never could believe,” Jessica cried. "None of you have ever
believed me, only Edwin— Edwin, my darling!”

She turned and gazed at Edwin, melting, her whole frame relaxing,
softening, yearning. "You knew, didn’t you, Edwin? I told you everything.”

Edwin stared. "I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said in a
clear voice.

“Oh yes, you do, my darling,” Jessica said, coaxing him. The white
hands fluttered toward him, they clasped each other. "Don’t be afraid,
you will have to tell your bride, and now I can tell Herbert. I have kept it
all a beautiful secret until now. But Herbert will have to know at last.”

"Jessica!” William said sternly, seeing his son’s face.

She paid no heed to him, the words flowed on, softly, freely, swept
upon her apparent love. "Don’t you remember, Edwin? Can you forget?
Don’t you remember the long lovely day we spent together in the hotel in
New York? I met you there, do you remember? The one day, my one
perfect day in ail my life! Ah, don’t be afraid to remember!”

Edwin leaped to his feet. He turned to Vera, his face white, even
his lips dry and white. "Vera, I assure you, I don’t know what she is
talking about,”

Vera rose, too. "I know you do not.” She put her hand in his arm.
"Let’s go outside and wait.” But she was suddenly very pale.

They went out and Elinor watched them, and Wiliam appalled and
dazed, glanced at her, and then stared at Jessica. Jessica was smiling gently,
her eyes upon the floor, seeing nothing.

"Poor Edwin,” she said softly, "he has not the courage to say he remem-
bers. But I shall never forget— never! It was I who refused him at last, Mrs.
Asher. I knew that the family would never accept me. And how could I
live in the house, with my mother in the kitchen? Of course I could have
dismissed her. That could have been done. But I refused my love. Now I

408

, AMERICAN TRIPTYCH'

kEOW how wrong that was. Love must never be refused, lead where it
may. I have lost, everything, except that one lovely day—with Mm. And. I
shall never see my mother again.”

“Jessica, you are lying,” William said. “You' know that there never was
such a day.” He made his voice loud, to penetrate the charm.

“Oh yes, indeed there was, and indeed and indeed,” Jessica said softly,
positively. She laid her clasped hands upon her bosom. “It is here for-
ever.” ;

^‘Wlliiam, let’s go home,” Elinor said. She rose and did not put out her
hand. “Jessica, I, too, do not believe one word of what you say. But you
must never again tell such lies. I shall tell Herbert myself that I think you
are either very ill or very wicked. I feel sorry for both Herbert and your
mother.”

She walked from the room and William followed. He turned his head
once to look back. Jessica sat with her hands clasped on her bosom, smil-
ing, as though she did not see them go. There was something very wrong.

Outside, the four of them climbed into the car and drove away in
silence. For what was there to say? What was Vera thinking and what lay
in the mind of Edwin, his son, and did Elinor doubt her son, in spite of
denial, as women always doubted men? Ah, what a maze of trouble, Wil-
liam thought, and there could never be peace in a world where there were
such troublemakers as Jessica, a woman of no worth whatever, one could
say, and yet a source of confusion and misery to them all.

A mile beyond the house Edwin stopped the car and jerked at the brake.
He turned half around in his seat and faced them. “I am so stunned I don’t
know what to say. It’s all utter fantasy. I don’t know what she’s talking
about.”

Elinor interrupted. “When she stood with her hands on your shoulders
that day in the hail, what was she saying?”

“What day?” Edwin asked, bewildered. “She’s had a way of putting her
hands on my shoulders ever since we were kids. I always tried to stand
out of reach.”

“Why didn’t you tell her to stop it?” Elinor asked in a hard voice.

“I didn’t want to hurt her feelings—you always told us not to—” Edwin
retorted.

Vera sat, silent, her head drooping.

“Had you any intimation,” William asked slowly, “that she was in love
with you?”

“I never thought of such a thing,” Edwin said bluntly. “It’s revolting,”
he added passionately.

He gazed at them, suddenly haggard. “How in hell am I going to prove
she was lying? If you don’t believe in me, who will?”

Vera turned her graceful head. “I believe in you,” she said distinctly.

“Oh Vera—” his voice broke.

“We all believe in you,” William said in a practical voice. “I think

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

409

Jessica has gone out of her mind. She’s making things up. Maybe she thinks
what she dreamed about is real. We had better just ignore the whole thing.”

“Gertainly,” Elinor said. She recovered herself as he spoke and leaned
to touch her son’s shoulder. “It has nothing to do with you, Edwin. I do
think simply that poor Jessica must have medical attention. I shall speak to
Herbert and Bertha, Now drive on home,”

They drove in silence, but who knew what was going on in the minds of
those two, sitting in the seat in front of him? Yet long ago William had
learned that the safest way to deal with the inexplicable was to ignore it
until it became explicable. The subconscious mind worked beneath the
routine of daily life, the blessed necessities of food and drink, fresh air
and sleep and above all of work. What madness indeed might take place
between human beings were there not the command of work to be done,
the body to be fed and clothed! It occurred to him when they reached
home to explain Jessica in this fashion to Elinor.

“Do you think it is mere idleness that ajSiicts Jessica? She has too much
time on her hands— maybe she always did have.”

“She wouldn’t have so much time if she took care of the house properly,”
Elinor said tartly. “Herbert tells me she will not wash his clothes any more.
He has to hire a neighbor woman to do them. And you remember he has
bought two vacuum cleaners— that’s more than you have done for me,
William.”

She looked at him with suddenly twinkling eyes.

“Herbert is a fool,” William said.

Nevertheless this folly could assume vast proportions. Herbert, Elinor
said, believed everything Jessica told him. He listened at night to her pretty
voice making hideous disclosures and in the morning he stared at Bertha
in a way that made her afraid of him.

“Herbert looks at me so, too,” Bertha had told Elinor only last night.
“I dondt like how he looks.”

“Jessica is too clever for Herbert,” Elinor now said. “He believes every-
thing she says because she speaks good English and he never got beyond
the fourth grade. Sometimes I think we had better send the whole lot of
them packing, I don’t care how long they’ve been with us.”

“We must wait until after Jessica has had the baby,” William replied.

“And,” he added after a moment’s further thought, “they work as well
as ever. In fact, I don’t know that Bertha has ever cooked better than she
is doing and Herbert is certainly trying. He actually asked if I would like
him to brush my shoes the other day.”

So they would wait for the birth of Jessica’s child.

Vera’s visit lasted a week, and nothing more was said about Jessica.
In her calm way Vera planned her wedding, setting the date forward to
early July instead of, as she had planned before, making it in September.

“Edwin needs me,” she said simply, her eyes blue and calm.

And William, divining some lingering uncertainty in Edwin, suggested

410

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

what lie' had only been thinking of, that Edwin should come into hiS; law
office after the honeymoon and ' get his apprenticeship through practice,
taking his work at law school after a year, or possibly two.

“It won’t hurt you to know something before you go to 'school again,’*
he said to his son. Inwardly he felt it would do Edwin good to be self-
supporting for a year or so after his marriage. Thus they united as a family
to mend the breach that Jessica had made.

“When is Jessica to have her baby?” Elinor inquired of Bertha.

Bertha shook her massive head. “I don’t know nottings—” she said stub-
bornly. “They tellt me noiimgs--nichts, nichts!” She and Herbert seldom
spoke. Ihe kitchen, which had been a companionable place, became a
room of solitude and hostility. Herbert ate his food in the pantry, serving
himself.

When Elinor asked Herbert he, too, shook his head. “Doctor can’t
seem to tell,” he replied evasively. “Any time in the month, I guess.”

The weeks went by and the child was not bom. One morning, however,
Herbert did not appear for breakfast. A telephone call later in the day
explained the reason.

“Jessica has been took,” Herbert bawled into the mouthpiece. “Fm at
the hospital. She had a hard time and I thought I lost her. It’s a girl.
Doctor says there can’t be no more. He’s tying her toobes right away,”

“Oh, Herbert, that’s too bad,” Elinor exclaimed.

“It don’t matter,” Herbert said. She could almost hear him wiping the
too ready damp from his face and neck. Herbert sweated easily, summer
or winter, an emotional effluvia that had nothing to do with heat or cold.
“I guess I won’t be at work for a couple days,” he added.

“Never mind,” she said. Really it would be a relief. She put up the
telephone and went out into the kitchen. Bertha down on her hands and
knees was scrubbing out the oven.

“Bertha,” Elinor said gently. “Herbert just telephoned. You have a little
granddaughter. I’m so glad.”

Bertha sobbed suddenly. “It dondt do me no good.”

“Yes, it will,” Elinor said, filled with pity. “As soon as she is big enough
Herbert can bring her here to see me, and then you will see her, too.”

“Herbert dondt let me,” Bertha muttered, thick with tears. She inserted
her head into the oven and reached for the far comers and her voice came
out hollow, “Herbert, he hates me, now, too.”

“Oh, Bertha,” Elinor said impatiently. She left the room, and did not
speak to Bertha again all day, waiting until William came home.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

411

, '‘They seem determined to hate each other, the whole lot of them,'^ she
declared. ‘1 feel sorry for that poor little baby.’’

“A girl again,” William said thoughtfully. ;

He was reassured, however, by Edwin’s wedding. Bertha' and Herbert
responded to the family’s crisis, a wedding demanded co-operation. Win-
sten and Madge came with the children, Susan had come from college,
and Ozark Pete, as William was beginning to call him privately, arrived
the day before, at Susan’s command.

The big house was full, there was no time for any but their own concerns,
and William relaxed, a boon he deserved, for he had brought to triumphant
conclusion his engagement with the city criminals. The three rascals whom
he defended, not for their worth but for their rights as citizens, however
mean, were discovered to be only minor in comparison to the real mur-
derer, who was apprehended, through the confessions of the fat-faced man
among the three. The prime criminal being safely in jail and destined for
the electric chair, the three minors were out on bail, severely warned by
William who promised them no further defense except upon good behav-
ior. Now he was ready to forget evildoers and bask in the pleasant goodness
of his family. It was June, the house was open at door and window, and
his small grandchildren played outside happily. He was pleased by the
deep devotion between Winsten and Madge, and not too much annoyed
by Madge’s air of triumph at having come to the wedding upon the eve
of the birth of her third child.

*‘He can be born anywhere,” she said recklessly, bursting into laughter.
“It might be fun to have him bom right here in his grandfather’s house.”

William merely smiled, praying inwardly that it might not be so. Mean-
while the weather reached perfection. Edwin had come home from college
with honors enough to please his parents. So far as William could see,
there was no cloud between the young man and Vera, and at the proper
time the family set out for Manchester, where the wedding was to take
place at two o’clock in the afternoon.

No, there was not a cloud between the two. Edwin came quietly into
the nave of the church with Winsten, his best man, as handsome young
men as one saw nowadays, William thought, the minister approached from
the opposite door in full regalia, and the organ, changing from its wistful
strains of “Oh Promise Me,” until the solemn joyful wedding march, gave
warning that he must with all others rise to his feet. Only Cousin Emma,
because of arthritis remained seated on the front pew with Vera’s mother.

So William watched again the unfailing pageant of life, the touching
powerful procession, his two small grandchildren, scattering rose petals
before Susan in gold gauze as the maid of honor, the following brides-
maids in pink and ivory, and at last the tall white bride, so young, her hand
upon her father’s arm. William had been through it with Winsten and yet
somehow this time he was moved more deeply. Vera had refused to believe

412

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

evil of Ms 'son, she had stood by him steadfastly upon his word, a noble
young girl, ready to become a noble wife*

He was somewhat disturbed m spite of himself, however, by the statu-
esque coldness of Vera’s face. White as marble, she moved slowly forward,
and she did not look up to meet Edwin’s ardent eyes. Gazing now at his
son’s face, he wondered if in the strongly focussed, expectant eyes he did
discern something like anxiety. Could it be that Jessica had indeed de-
stroyed something between these two, even though there was not an iota
of truth in what she had said? Were there even a trace of truth he could
not have blamed Ms son, A boy growing always too quickly for himself is
not to be blamed.

He remembered at this moment, most unwillingly, an incident in his
own youth. He, William Asher, in love with the girl Elinor, had neverthe-
less been compelled to confess to her in the lovely and dreadful week
before his marriage, that he had once been such a fool in his Senior year
at Harvard as to let himself be taken by a gang of college mates to a
hideous house on the edge of Cambridge, far from the Yard, What he
could not confess was that she herself was partly to blame, the long
engagement she had demanded, her gradually increasing yet always deli-
cate warmth, the weariness of their slowly approaching wedding day, his
fear of himself, lest the controls break and he offend her at the very outset
of married love, how could he explain to the virgin Elinor these darknesses?
His experience had been ugly enough so that he iSied the place early and
alone, but nevertheless there remained something to be told, and Elinor
had listened, as wMte as Vera now was, and as hopelessly pure. He still
remember^ her forgiveness, the moment of his deepest self-abasement,
for years not allowed in Ms memory until now suddenly it came back
whole, Ms resentment increased because in spite of the years he had never
let her know she ought to share the blame with him.

He felt profound pain now for his son, and wondered if at any time it
would be possible to hint that Edwin must never ask Vera to forgive him,
even if what Jessica had said had been wholly true, lest by asking for-
giveness he confirm her doubt of Mm.

Upon this he brought himself up with a start. The two were making
their promises while he was so unfaithful to Edwin as to act in Ms thoughts
as if Jessica had been telling the truth instead of, as he truly believed,
merely the worst of falsehoods, to be explained only by the sort of inex-
plicable madness that sometimes besets a woman,

Winsten put the ring from his vest pocket into his brother’s waiting hand
and Edwin placed it upon Vera’s finger, speaking the ancient and beautiful
words, and now they were spoken, the two knelt to receive the benediction,
the prayer for their lifelong faithfulness. Wiliiam had perfect confidence
in the quality of Ms son, born to be faithful to duty as well as to love. But
would Vera make demands upon Mm beyond that which a man could
bear? Jessica had cast a cloud upon them, nevertheless, he thought gloomily,

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

a cloud even Upon him because he would never know what Vera might;do
to his fine son, and he might have to wait for yearS' tO' pass before he
knew, and then, only by watching Edwin, whether he held up, his head in '
self-confidence as a man could do only when he was sure of his wife’s
love. But if he saw Edwin’s proud head begin
to stoop, if he saw that dreadful downward look of the man betrayed by
Ms marriage and wounded by his wife’s superior purity, then he would
know. , . .

The wedding march burst forth with the peal of bells, and the two
marched toward the open door, and Edwin held his head high enough.
But Vera’s face was still white and cold.

Elinor was sleepless. William, waking from what he realized was only
light slumber, saw that although she had shut the door between their rooms,
the door, shrunken with age, left a good half inch beneath it open and in
this generous crack he saw light cast by the yellow lamp shade of Elinor’s
bedside lamp. Lying exactly as he had waked, flat upon his back, head
thrust back, he listened and heard her footsteps prowling about in velvet
slippers. He turned enough to see the illumined face of the clock upon
the small table beside his bed. It was three o’clock, that dreadful hour at
which the hidden worries of the day creep out like beasts of the night, to
snarl and spread their poisonous forebodings. He sighed and got up, thrust
his feet into his slippers and put on his bathrobe. He had left the cord
of the belt in a knot and he fumbled at it, impatient, and then let it go
as it was. He knocked at Elinor’s door. There were times when she did
not wish to have the door opened, and he had learned this early.

She did not now reply to come in. Instead he heard her inquiring voice,
rather high, Yes?”

“Are you sleepless?” he called back.

“Come in,” she said after the briefest pause.

So he went in. She was lying now on her chaise longue holding about
her a soft silk quilt

“Can’t you sleep?” he repeated, staring at her. Her long hair, looking
silvery blonde as it had in her youth, was braided in two braids and these
hung over her shoulders. Her face without makeup was white between
them and he thought she looked exhausted.

“I keep thinking about Vera,” she said abruptly.

“Why Vera?” he asked stupidly.

“Does she believe what Jessica said or not?” Elinor asked, not of him,
but anyhow.

He sat down on the end of the chaise longue. “Can we do anything
about that, my dear?”

“I keep wondering.”

He would have liked to go to bed, remembering the work piled upon
his desk for the morrow, but he knew her tenacious mind. He had taught

414

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

himself to turn off his own mind, he could delay further' thought until he
felt ready to begin it again, but she pursued conclusion without stop,
although when she reached it, he reflected, she never 'thought again of that
single pursuit. The answer, when she found it, was final.

“I am afraid of what Vera is thinking,^’ she said gently.

The words, so cool, so absolute in their gentleness, brought him a
violent shock.

‘‘Will you never forget?” he demanded. “Haven’t all these years meant
anything to you? Haven’t ! proved my faithfulness?”

“Of course they do— of course you have,” she replied, her voice, her
eyes caressing, “but will Vera know?”

He saw what she meant, he thought gloomily. Vera was at the point
where he and Elinor had been twenty-five and more years ago. It was
Edwin’s wedding night, alas!

“I thought it was all dead and buried decades ago,” he groaned.

“It is,” she insisted, “but don’t you see that it has only begun for Edwin
and Vera tonight?”

“Has that anything to do with us?” he demanded.

“They are our children and we want them to be happy.”

“We’ve been happy— can’t we trust them to find their own happiness as
we have?” he urged.

She did not reply, she thought this over, there was reservation, he felt
it, he saw it in the silence in the closing look of her face.

“I suppose only I understand how Vera might feel,” she said at last.

“Come,” he said with impatience, “after aU these years, is there still
something you have not told me?”

They looked at each other and the years faded into unreality. What was
real was their wedding night when even in the midst of his hunger and
ardor, he had seen tears in her eyes. She was so beautiful, the delicately
strong, the exquisitely slender girl who was at last his own. Her pale gold
hair that night was spread on the pillow like a wide halo, he had spread
it so, marvelling at the length, the fineness, the living touch of it in his
hands. In those days there was everything to know upon his wedding night.
He had never seen her hair down, he had never seen the contour of her
breasts, the shape of her waist, the roundness of her hips, the long grace
of her legs, her narrow feet. He had never even seen her ankles bare.
Absorbed and trembling, rapt in passion and wonder, incredible that aU
was now his, he had not seen her tears until the light from the lamp fell
upon her face and he saw them shining in the blueness of her eyes.

He had fallen back. “What is wrong?” he demanded.

“Nothing,” she had faltered.

“But something,” he had insisted, and pausing, harnessing and holding
back all his onrushing love, he had probed and questioned, had wrenched
from her the truth that she could not forget this was not the first time for
him, for there had been that other woman.

VOICES ^ IN THE 'HOUSE

, Why had he told her? If he had not been so utterly trathfel he would
have concealed the whole wretched meaningless episode, the college prank,
to which he had yielded because of her intolerable delay, the act so sud-
denly repulsive to him even in the doing, so miserable to remember, which'
indeed he was determined to forget. He had explained all this again to her '
on Ms wedding night. She had seemed to understand. But now , so many
more years later he saw that she had not understood! And would not
perhaps ever understand. It was a sacrilege to have brought into that magic
hour of first love, yes, that holy hour, the folly which he had felt himself
childishly compelled to confess to her.

'‘My God,” he cried out now, “how I wish I had never told you!”

“Do you?” she asked. “Do you really wish you had not told me?”

“You have never forgotten,” he accused her.

“I forget nothing that has happened between you and me,” she replied.

“And not satisfied with never forgetting,” he cried out against her, “you
transplant your memory to your own son and his young wife!” He got up
and walked about the floor. The cord he had not been able to tie was a
nuisance again, his bathrobe did not stay together, he had to stop under
the light to discover the mischief.

She got up automatically, then, and untied the cord for him, her thin
fingers nimble and dexterous where his fumbled. She tied the belt securely
about him and lay down again and drew the quilt to her neck. He ac-
cepted the service without thinking.

“Vera has grown up in a more sensible age than we did,” he went on.
“The war made women more sensible, at least.”

“By sensible just what do you mean?” she inquired.

He was unwilling to analyze and then he did so, against his will. “I mean
simply that man and woman cannot be judged by the same standards.
That is as old-fashioned as Adam, but the truth remains ever new.”

“Then you think Edwin is guilty?” she said too quietly.

“Guilty?” he repeated. “I don’t know what you mean. If you mean is
Jessica lying— yes, I do— that is, I think she is.”

“You think she is,” Elinor repeated.

“How does anyone know anything?” he replied, irritated. In some absurd
far-reaching illogical fashion Jessica had woven even his abortive folly into
the web which now caught even his son into its meshes. Had he not gone
to Rose Schwenk’s place, Elinor would not have believed Jessica, it would
have been incredible that her son and his could have stooped to a servant
girl, even though the girl was Jessica. But now!

And all this was taking place in this present year, this most modern
year, the papers full of divorce and scandals, where sex was reckoned as
only an appetite, scarcely to be confused with love. Here in his home, in
Vermont, in a valley encircled by green mountains, he and Elinor W'ere
living in an age the world had forgot. Such was the power of love.

416

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He turned to his wife, his face set, his jaws white, his teeth clenched,
and he held out his arms.

“I will slay myself for you,” he muttered. most have your faith as
well as your love. I will not be betrayed by your distrust in me. For if
you do not trust me, then all else is dust upon my head, ashes io my mouth.”

His black and bitter eyes compelled her, she was overcome by his
despair, and she rose instantly from the couch and went into his arms
and he held her, his cheek upon the top of her head, upon the soft crown
of her hair. No words— no words—only this, and let it be enough, at least
for tonight, and at least for themselves in their generation. The young must
learn in their own fashion, for no one could teach them. Love must be
learned afresh by every human heart, newborn and alone.

want to go and see Jessica and her baby.”

This was Madge at breakfast, surrounded by her young, a proud ma-
donna, her husband on her right hand. Elinor was late, a most unusual
accident for which William was grateful when he entered the dining room
promptly at half past eight. He had not dared to open her door, but
listening outside he had heard no sound.

The sun was bright after a light rain just before dawn, a gentle roll of
thunder introducing the sudden cloud. Herbert was zealous with buttered
toast for the children, and Madge was announcing her intention to him as
WiiHam entered the room.

“Good morning,” William said. He sat down and received the sticky
kisses of his grandchildren, who had been instructed, he felt sure, by their
mother, to kiss their grandparents morning and night without fail, and at
any time between. Madge was a demonstrative wife and mother, believing
that kisses and endearments were the cement of family life.

It was impossible not to appreciate the picture she made as a young
and blooming mother, his daughter-in-law, although he averted his eyes
when Winsten picked up Madge’s plump little hand and held it to his cheek.
Winsten was uxorious, and this was repellent, but he was glad his son was
happy. Both parents adored the sight of their children kissing their grand-
father.

“That’s right, darlings,” Madge cooed. “You must always love Grand-
father.”

“Yes, indeed,” William echoed sincerely enough but conscious of the
coolness of his words and tone in contrast to Madge’s rich enthusiasm.

Herbert did not answer Madge’s announcement. He left the room mur-
muring about more hot toast, and Madge went on comfortably now to
William. “I do feel I should show some interest. After all, Jessica grew
up in this house, and this is her first child. Then, too, I might be of help.
It is very sad that she will not let Bertha even see the baby. I might be
able to say something.”

“I shall be glad if you can raise Bertha’s spirits,” William said. “It may

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

417

do; Jessica good to see someone so entirely normal as you are, Madge. I
confess I cannot understand Jessica,'’ '

He pondered wliether he should tell them of Jessica’s extraordinary out-
burst about Edwin and then decided that he would not Even though it
was all in the family,, one never knew how Madge might take it There
was no jealousy between the two brothers, he believed, but Edwin now
had a wife, and granting that Vera was altogether different from Madge,
William was not sure that this removed her from the possibility of jealousy,
her own or Madge’s. He was not used to having two daughters-indaw, nor
was Madge used to having a sister-in-law—beautiful and young, whose
figure as yet was unspoiled. He imagined that Vera would never allow her
figure to be spoiled, whatever the number of her children, and this in itself
might be a source of jealousy one day, for Madge was the mother type
who believed that babies should be breast-fed, and she would think it
Indecent to consider the contour of a woman’s breasts more important
than their use for motherhood, or indeed for any other use at all. Winsten,
William thought, glancing sharply at his son, looked completely fatuous,
a thin intense young man, devoted in fatherhood. What sort of husband
was he? Well, Madge had made him whatever he was. Madge was inexo-
rably maternal, her soft massive love absorbed all about her. It was only
with the greatest firmness that William himself refused to be absorbed.
He loved his grandchildren, sticky though they were with morning mar-
malade, but he refused to consider them more than a sideline in his life.
He was determined to be something more than a mere grandfather, how-
ever Madge might view him. It occurred to him that perhaps the only
way Winsten could be his young wife’s lover was to embrace her first as
the mother of his children. A revolting possibility, William thought, avert-
ing his mind from the scene. He finished his breakfast hastily, making only
a few ordinary remarks and grunting occasionally when the children put
a question to him. Then he got up.

*T shan’t wake your mother,” he said to Winsten at the door. ‘*Ask
her to telephone me when she gets up.”

He left them with a propitiatory smile, a kiss tossed off his moustache
to the children, and was glad to get away, Herbert had made a quick
change and was the chauffeur again, immobile and silent at the wheel.
William was going this morning only to Manchester, the city office being
in the usual summer slackness. It was odd but true that city crime took a
moderate vacation in the summer, too, growing brisk again in the sharpness
of autumn air.

The green hills were pleasant, the sunshine spilled over into the vafieys
and he wondered if he should speak to Herbert merely in good humor
and decided against it. There was something threatening about Herbert’s
tight small mouth this morning. So he sat silent and at peace, putting out
of his mind the difficulties of human relationships, and meditating upon
the gratifying aspects of the law, where all was according to pattern and

418

AME’RICAN TRIPTYCH

precedent and one knew exactly wkat was rlglit. A pity sucIi patterns could
not regulate the minds as weil- as the actions' of men and: women! He
enjoyed the approach to the town, and noticed the attack of tourists, school
teachers on a hoiiday by the busload. The car slowed and Herbert chose
a side street and they drew up before the old red brick mansion' which
years ago William had made into his first law office, and from which he
would not have departed now for any cause whatsoever, although he had
almost no local practice any more. The older he grew the less change he
wanted in his life. This alone made Jessica a menace. Remote as she was,
a contemptible creature, yet the irrationality of her uneducated mind
created a force which could destroy a rational and innocent universe how-
ever small, and that universe his own. He considered again the dismissal
of Bertha and Herbert, a clean sweep, removing his household from the
fatal orbit within which entirely by chance they were being drawn. For
he did not believe for a moment that they had heard the last of Jessica.
Yet constitutionally he distrusted clean sweeps.

The morning passed quietly at his desk and he was only uneasy at noon
when he allowed himself to realize what he had been aware of all along,
that Elinor had not telephoned. He ordered his lunch sent in from the
nearby hotel and decided that he would not call her. That she had not
called him meant either that she was still asleep, which he could not believe,
or that she did not wish to call, in which case she had better be left alone.
Long ago he had learned that it availed him nothing if his impatience
compelled him to find out her reasons before she chose to reveal them.

He allowed the day to pass, granting himself only no delay after five
o’clock. To his astonishment, when he went out to the car he found that
the driver was not Herbert but Winsten.

*Tt’s a surprise, I know,” Winsten said, reaching to open the door. ‘‘Get
in— it’s been a queer day. Herbert had to go home. Madge thought he
should.”

William got in. “Whafs wrong now?”

“Madge wanted me to tell you alone on the way home,” Winsten said.

He steered his way carefully among clumps of tired tourists, waiting to
get into returning buses. “Madge feels terribly sorry for Jessica. She thinks
we ought to do something for her immediately.”

“Well, well,” William said, “let’s get it over with.”

The scene, reconstructed from Winsten’s cautious narrative and pro-
pelled by h^ own dry occasional questions, was clear enough. He and
Madge had taken the children with them this morning and had driven
to the farmhouse. There they had found everything wrong. No one had
answered their cries or knocks, and at last listening they heard the baby
crying upstairs, Madge could bear it no longer. She tried the front door
and found it unlocked.

“Winsten, you stay here with the children and 111 go up,” she had
commanded.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

419

^'What about the dog?” WMam interrupted.

^ We didn’t see the dog then,” Winsten replied.

Madge had gone straight upstairs, although the steep stairs were difficult
for her. She went to the door from which the baby’s crying came, and then
she heard Jessica weeping in low moaning wails.

She tried to open the door, but this door was locked. She shook the
handle. “Jessica!” she cried, “let me in. It is Madge Asher. WeVe come to
see you.”

Then she heard the growl of the dog, the loud bass roar. “Jessica!” she
cried again.

“I can’t let you in,” Jessica called back, her voice all broken with sobs.
“I can’t hold the dog.” ■

The dog sounded vicious enough to make Madge pause indeed. She
went down the evil stairs again and out into the yard, where Winsten was
waiting with the children, and told him what Jessica had said.

“You get into the car and stay with the children. Fli go up,” he said.

She obeyed him, for now she was honestly afraid. It was too strange.
Why had Jessica locked herself in with the baby and the dog in that up-
stairs room? Or had she? Perhaps Herbert had locked them there. She got
into the car with the children and Winsten searched the yard and found
a heavy stick.

“Do be careful,” she begged from the window of the car.

“I’m not afraid of a dog,” he retorted.

He climbed the stairs and rattled the handle of the door. “Jessica!” he
shouted. “It is I, Winsten Asher. What is the matter in there?”

She stopped her sobbing, and he supposed she must have taken the child
in her arms, nursed it perhaps, for its crying stopped abruptly. Only the
dog continued its horrible hoarse growling.

“Open the door,” he commanded.

“In a minute, Mr, Winsten,” she said in her usual sweet voice. “I just
have to tie the dog.”

What was this, Winsten asked himself. Gould she not have tied the dog
before? He heard her talking to the dog in her light coaxing way.

“Now stop. Pirate. It’s a friend. You needn’t be excited. It’s Winsten.
Don’t you remember Winsten? He was always my friend.”

A moment after that she opened the door and he saw an incredible
sight. She stood there, quite composed, the child at her breast. Behind her
was the dog tied into a huge kennel which stood between the twin beds.

“Come in, please, Mr. Winsten,” she said gently. “I am not strong
enough to go downstairs yet, and I keep Pirate up here with me while
Herbert is away. There are so many tramps, especially in summer, and
they ail seem to know that I am here alone.”

Her meek voice, her pure accents, calmed his astonishment, even his
horror, for the dog was a dreadful sight, its meaty jaws slathered with
foam, its red eyes rolling. Still, he could understand that she was afraid.

420

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘"Shall I call Mrs. Asher?” he suggested,

“Oh do, please,” Jessica said almost gaily. “I am so glad she has come,
it’s very kind of the family.”

So, much bewildered, he had gone downstairs again to fetch Madge,
who was astonished, too, when he told her, and they left the children for
a moment, locked in the car, and went upstairs together. Jessica had sat
down in a rocking chair and the dog had ceased to strain against the
leather thongs which tied it into the kennel, although its jaws still dripped
and its baleful eyes still glowered.

“Do come in, Mrs. Winsten, dear,” Jessica said warmly. “I was just
sitting there crying all by myself I was so lonesome. I didn’t recognize your
voice, I couldn’t hear you clearly else I would have let you in at once.
I have always to tell strangers at the door that I daren’t let the dog loose.”

It was all reasonable enough, except that it seemed absurd and unreal.

“The front door was open,” Winsten said.

Jessica looked vexed. “That’s careless of Herbert! I beg him to lock the
house when he leaves in the morning but he thinks I am just silly. He has
no imagination. He cannot think how it is with me here alone all day,
and now this child—”

She looked down at the child as it suckled, her eyes almost hostile, and
Winsten had his first quick distrust of her. For gazing at that innocent
face, the eyes closed now, the lips relaxing, Jessica asked in strange abstract
wonder, “How could this child be born? I shall never understand.”

Madge was touched. “Oh, my dear,” she remonstrated. “You must not
talk like that. When men and women love each other, babies always come.”

Jessica looked up at Madge standing above her like a kindly goddess of
fertility.

“Ah, but I don’t love Herbert,” she said clearly, coldly.

Madge turned to Winsten. "‘Go downstairs, dear, and see to the children.

I shall be quite all right. I must have a talk with poor Jessica.”

So unwillingly Winsten had gone downstairs and Madge stayed and she
repeated their talk faithfully afterwards to Winsten when they were driving
home.

It is very wrong not to love your own husband, Jessica,” she had said.

“Oh, I know it is,” Jessica sighed. “I try and try.”

“Did you never love Herbert?” Madge inquired. She pulled up a small
chair and sat down and took the baby in her arms. Poor little creature,
she thought, it looked like Herbert and was quite ugly.

Jessica drew her dress over her breast and leaned back and closed her
eyes. “It’s all so— disgusting!” she whispered.

“What?” Madge asked.

""To have to be alone with Herbert here in this room, night after night—
when I don’t love him.”

Madge was shocked. ""Why did you marry him?”

“Mr. William Asher said I must.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

421

*‘My fat!ier-iii“!aw?” ■

Jessica nodded, and large tears welled beneath her golden lashes and
slipped down her pale 'cheeks.

‘‘But why?” Madge demanded.

“I cannot tell you,” Jessica cried. “Oh, I must never, never tell!”

She did not tell, she would not tell, she could only weep hysterically
in a convulsion of sorrow. She clung to Madge with both hands. “Oh,
you must never, never ask me, promise me,”- she cried. “You must never
mention it even to Winsten. Only Edwin knows. Edwin knows everything.
But Mr. Asher doesn’t know that Edwin knows. Edwin was like my brother.
Oh, he is my brother— we’E never change to each other.”

Frightful vistas opened before Madge. Jessica was too pretty, she had
always been too pretty, and older men could be very strange.

“But did he—” she began.

“Oh yes, yes, yes,” Jessica cried in a rush.

“Tell me this,” Madge said sternly, “how long did it go on?”

“Oh, years,” Jessica said desperately. “When I came back from the
convent I was only seventeen. I couldn’t help giving in then, could I? It
went on and on.”

The dog began to growl suddenly and Madge gave a start.

“He won’t hurt you,” Jessica said. “It’s only men he hates. I’ve taught
him that.”

The baby slept on peacefully in her arms and Madge could have cried.
Poor little thing, what chance had it here in this house? What a tangle
life could be!

“Please don’t cry, Jessica,” she said mildly. Her own life had been so
happy that she had no notion of what to do now. She felt the firm universe,
the little warm universe which was her own, begin to crumble about her.
If Winsten’s own father—

She got up and laid the baby on the bed and put a bit of the counterpane
over it, “I shall have to think what to do, Jessica,” she said. “I want to
help you but now I don’t know how. I have to think of the family first,”

“Oh, yes,” Jessica agreed humbly. “We must always think of the family
first I quite realize that”

She got up and stood waiting, looking so quiet, so sad, that Madge was
overcome with pity in the midst of her daze. “Poor Jessica,” she said
simply. “It must have been awful for you, living there.”

Jessica’s eyes filled again. “I can’t forget,” she whispered.

Madge nodded and unable to speak she went downstairs and closed the
front door and crept into the car. ...

“I think it best to tell you exactly what happened, sir,” Winsten said.
He had taken the long road home, to give them both time. Now, his eyes
upon the road, golden in the late sunshine, he did not turn his head even
to glance at his father’s profile.

William had pished and pshawed while the narrative went on. Now
however he was in the stillness of profound wrath.

422

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH ;

“This is just enough,” he declared between set teeth. Jessica is Insane.
There is no doubt of it The idea, the very idea— ”

He swallowed and coughed and choked, Winsten slowed the car and
thumped him on the back. “Take it easy, sir.”

“I know you wouldn’t believe such a ridiculous hallucination,” William
said hoarsely, still stifled. “Fm not so sure about Madge. Women are infer-
nally ready to believe the worst about men when it comes to sex. Even
your mother—” His cough seized him again and threatened to strangle
him.

“Here, here,” Winsten said, pulling up to the side of the road.

“Choking— on my own spittle—” William gasped, purple in the face.

Winsten waited, thumping him gently and rhythmically on the back un-
til he had control again of his wind.

“Well,” William said, wiping his eyes, “that was a performance! I don’t
know that I ever had such a thing happen to me before. But I was never
so angry before. Does Madge think—?”

“I don’t know what Madge thinks in her heart of hearts,” Winsten broke
in wearily. “She’s a creature of instinct, as all good mothers are. When
she’s pregnant everything is exaggerated.”

“You don’t mean she really believes I would demean myself with a
savant girl!” William shouted violently.

“She doesn’t believe anything exactly,” Winsten said doggedly. “She just
feels with Jessica somehow.”

William shut his mouth firmly and folded his arms, and sat stiff and
silent. “Let’s get home,” he muttered after a moment. “I’m going to talk
to Herbert.”

The contamination of Jessica in his household might be dreadful, in-
deed uncontrollable, if Madge were allowed to spread her feelings about.
Something had to be done. He was not afraid of any woman, certainly
not of his own daughter-in-law, and he would simply stop the whole trouble
at its source, which was Jessica. Jessica could not be allowed to go on like
this and he would tell Herbert so. Herbert was at least a man, and Jessica’s
husband.

He got out of the car at his own door and upon the terrace saw Susan
and Pete; they were playing a childish game of some sort together, rubber
balls attached to long strands of rubber and wooden bats. Each of them
had such an instrument and they were laughing loudly. They did not see
hiin and he passed them by. It was odd that Pete did not go back to his
business, his garage in the Ozarks or whatever it was. He would be glad
when Susan’s wedding was over, too. Let them all get married and go away
and leave him and Elinor in peace,

Herbert at the door took his hat and cane.

“Come into the library, Herbert,” William said sternly.

“The dinner is just on the boil, sir,” Herbert suggested.

“Never mind,” William said in the same voice.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

423

;®Td better warn Bertha/V Herbert said.

. Wiliiam stalked ahead into the library and shut the door. He sat down
in the highbacked oaken chair at the end of the long table of English oak
and waited. ^ In a moment Herbert came in soft-shod and closed the door
and stood against it, his large face pale.

*^Yes, sir?’^

How could he begin, William asked himself, how could he repeat to
Herbert the vile and foolish fantasy which Jessica had woven? Begin he
must, and he did so firmly.

“Herbert, my elder son and his wife went to see Jessica today in the
kindness of their' hearts.”

“Thank you, sir—” Herbert whimpered under his breath.

“While there,” William continued sternly, “Jessica told a complete false-
hood to my daughter-in-law concerning events she declared had taken place
while she was in my house.”

Herbert’s head drooped, his fat face began to quiver.

“I could take legal steps for defamation of character,” William con-
tinued, “and I would do so except that I believe Jessica to be mentally
ill. I demand that you have a doctor examine her at once.”

Herbert’s face disintegrated, his eyes ran with tears, his tiny mouth
trembled between his great cheeks, his chin shook like a dish of jelly.

“It’s that black dog, sir,” he sobbed.

“The dog?”

“Yes, sir. She don’t let me come near her— weeks and months it’s been.
The dog stays between her and me day and night.”

“Do you mean to say she keeps the dog there all night when you are
at home?” William inquired, aghast.

“She keeps the dog because of me, sir,” Herbert faltered. “She ain’t
afraid of no man— just me.”

“What do you do to her?” William demanded.

Herbert pulled a large clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped
his face. “Nothing, sir, except I want my rights.”

He folded the handkerchief neatly and put it into his pocket. Then he
looked at Wiliiam humbly, his face glistening with sudden sweat.

“Sit down,” William ordered.

Herbert sat down on a comer of one of the heavy chairs and con-
tinued to look at his master with eyes piteous but dogged.

“Explain yourself,” William commanded him.

Herbert cleared his throat and leaned forward slightly. “As man to
man, sir,” he began—

And upon this William, his eyes fixed upon Herbert’s pallid and glisten-
ing face, saw unfolded before him a scene as old as man and woman.

The man, who only happened to be Herbert, advanced nightly upon the
woman whom he had made his own with her consent, given for what rea-
son could not be imagined, and nightly the drama repeated itself, Jessica’s

424

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

delicacy, her fantastic imagination, her thwarted longings, her melancholy
inheritance shaped in remote ages in the Black Forest of Germany, con»
centrated now into a single blind determination. She would not yield to
this man, she the woman. Oh, she had yielded at first, half laughing,
flouncing at him, ‘‘Leave me alone, you dirty beast!”

He had left her alone then sometimes, cunningly trying to arouse desire
in her by ways he knew, ways he had tried before on other women, ways
he had heard men talk about—

“Don’t touch me, schweinhund!” she had screamed. “I am not like
that.”

He had been cautiously patient, knowing that good women did not give
in all at once. But what does a man do when a woman never gives in?
What does a man do when a woman bites and scratches him so that he
had to hold down her hands and thrust his arm against her throat so that
she cannot raise her head and then must mount her hard so that her kick-
ing legs and thrusting feet do not wound him in his tenderest parts?

“I ask you, sir,” Herbert said, the tears starting down his cheeks again,
“what do I do?”

“I cannot imagine your wanting to— to compel your wife against her
will,” William said, sickened to the soul.

“What for does a man marry?” Herbert asked, astonished. “A man
pays, don’t he? He gives her bed and board, so to speak, and everything
else beside. I’ve give Jessica everything she ast for—”

He ticked off again on his stubby fingers what he had given her, the
Beautyrest mattresses, the washing machine, the two vacuum cleaners,
the almost antique furniture, the gold-edged mirror, the new blankets, the
refrigerator, the electric stove, at last the carpet, yes and carpet even on
the stairs.

“What do I ast back? Just my rights,” Herbert said. His humility passed
from him suddenly, William saw a man remembering his wife whom he
was determined to possess.

“What’s more. I’m goin’ to have my rights,” Herbert said, heavily.

“How do you propose to get them?” William inquired, his voice grim.

It was useless to explain to this male that there was no getting without
givmg. The subtleties of sex were beyond Herbert’s comprehension. The
delicate lessons which he himself had taken so long to learn Herbert could
never grasp, nor even their necessity. Perhaps for Herbert they were not
necessary. To take might be enough for this molecular soul surrounded so
massively with body. But ah, Jessica was another material. William had
rnercy enough in his heart suddenly to be sorry for Jessica. He caught a
dim glimpse of what it might mean to be a woman.

“I’ll take my rights,” Herbert said. His small mouth pursed into a tight
knot. “First of all, I’ll get rid of that dog.”

William sighed. “Why don’t you handle the matter a little gently, so
that she won’t suspect? Ask Pete to take the dog back. Say that it is getting

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 425

too fierce to be with the child and you would be obliged if it could be
taken away. Then Jessica will not blame you so much.”

Herbert stared at him. “Ifs a good idea, sir. It takes a lawyer, I guess,
to think of how to do things,” He hesitated. “I wisht I could do it now,
tonight”

“Why not?” William replied. “You might ask Pete at once. He will
be leaving perhaps tomorrow.”

Herbert got up. “Thank you, sir-Bertha will wash the dishes, I guess.”

“Go now,” William said. He did not want Herbert about the dinner
table tonight “Madge said your wife was in a bad way this morning. Get
home to her. Ill speak to Susan, They can go with you, tie the dog in the
car, and get their dinner somewhere on the way home.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He waited for Herbert to leave and then he went out to the terrace
and there found Elinor with Susan and Pete, The game was over, Susan
was shaking cocktails and Pete was lounging in the most comfortable
chair.

“Get up, you big bum,” Susan said cheerfully to her betrothed. “Don’t
you see my father?”

Pete got up, grinning. “Didn’t know this was your chair—”

“It isn’t, particularly,” William said. He paused to kiss Elinor’s cheek
and took another chair.

She said, “I heard you and Herbert in the library, and I didn’t come
in.”

“Jessica is in a bad way,” William replied. “Herbert feels he must go
home at once. Susan, he has a strange request to make but I concur in
it for reasons I will explain later. He wishes that Pete would take away
the black dog.”

“Now?” Susan’s dark eyes were large.

“At once,” William said firmly.

He glanced at Elinor to see if her face betrayed the slightest change
of knowledge. He saw nothing. The twilight fell upon her lovely hair and
placid eyes. Madge might be honorable enough, after ail, to say nothing
except to Winsten, and his own son he could trust. As soon as possible
he himself would tell Elinor the whole miserable fantasy, once the dog
was gone, once Herbert had a chance to assert his will. He felt guilty
in strangely hidden ways, that he was, so to speak, delivering Jessica over
to the male, but perhaps that was what she needed. She had been spoiled
all her life, catered to, indulged, nobody had ever made her do anything,
beginning with gentle old Heinrich, and even Bertha with her sporadic
slaps and tantrums, and certainly Cousin Emma. They had all made far
too much of a child who though she happened to be pretty and vaguely
talented was after all doomed, or destined, rather, to be nothing but a
servant. Let Herbert beat her if need be, once and for all. He did not

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

want to talk to Elinor until this was over. Elinor would somehow prevent

it , ' ' ■ ■' ■ '

. .Herbert drew the grey car in front of the terrace a few minutes later
and sat immobile.

/Well, Pete?” Susan inquired.

“I don’t care,” he said amiably, and so^ the two^ went off, and' at the
same moment Winsten came down, preventing William from being alone
with Elinor.

“Where is Madge?” Elinor inquired. “I’m ashamed that I’ve slept all
day. But I felt tired after the wedding.”

“Madge isn’t feeling quite herself,” Winsten replied. “I have told her
to go to bed.”

“Oh dear,” Elinor said, “is it, do you think— ”

“I don’t know,” Winsten said, “it may be. We’U soon see.”

His thin young face was worried, the perpetual father, WilHam thought,
not without relief that Madge could not appear.

“The trip this morning was too much for her,” Elinor said.

“The children have been fretful this afternoon,” Winsten replied. He
poured himself a cocktail. “Where are Susan and Pete going?”

“Herbert wants the black dog taken away tonight.” William said signifi-
cantly. talked with him about Madge’s impression of Jessica this morn-
ing. He thinks the dog has an unhealthy influence on Jessica— has thought
so for a long time.”

“How strange,” Elinor said in surprise. “I wouldn’t have suspected Her-
bert of so much subtlety,”

“It may be oflly a notion,” William said quietly.

Winsten said nothing. He stirred his drink slowly, his eyes downcast.

“Don’t worry about Madge,” his mother said. “It would be rather nice
having a baby born here the way you all were.”

“I’m only thinking about my job,” Winsten said. “I ought to telephone
the first thing in the morning,”

“Well, not until morning,” Elinor said comfortably. “Let’s go in to

It was weU toward midnight before William heard the car come up to
the tenace. He had not gone to bed, pleading papers, and he had sat
atone m the library working after Elinor left him.

I shall sleep with one eye open,” she had said. “I don’t like Madge’s
iooks. I thmk something is going to happen before dawn. Winsten has
called the doctor. He’s made a reservation in the hospital, at least.” This
was after she had been upstairs to see Madge.

“That’s better,” William said absently. “I hate nurses in the house-

always did.”

She laughed softly, and kissed him. “You dried up old lawyer,” she

said. Babies mean nothing to you, I do believe.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

427 ;

like them when they’re washed, properly dressed and looking like
human beings.”

** You always acted as though you had nothing to do with ours,” she
accused him.

^^My part was somewhat vague,” he admitted.

She shook him slightly. “Such talk,” she scolded, but lovingly.

He smiled up at her and when she bent to kiss him again he held her
down for a moment, his hand on the back of her neck.

“Have you been quite happy with me?”

“On the whole, yes,” she said round and clear.

“I never forced you— against your will?”

He thought he caught the slightest flickering of her golden eyelashes.
“Not really-”

“No, now, Elinor,” he demanded.

“Oh, let’s not talk about things at this late date—”

“Indeed we will,” he said with sudden anger. “Come, sit down. Now
when did I ever force you against your will?”

She sat down, opened her blue eyes very wide and began to take down
her hair, pin by pin, and braid it before his eyes, growing younger by the
minute as she did so.

“All right, stupid, if you don’t know by now. Of course you forced
me, not by raping me or anything so silly. Still, plenty of times a woman
doesn’t want to— but she does it anyway, because if she doesn’t the man
gets huffed, irritable, cross the next day with children, and it just isn’t
worth it—”

He stared at her and felt something collapse within him.

“Elinor,” he stammered. “Elinor, you didn’t—”

She gazed at him rebelliously. “Yes, I did, and you have made me tell
something I didn’t want to tell and don’t want to tell, and now that I’ve
told you, you are going to get angry with me. How unreasonable and
illogical and emotional and ridiculous men arel You want romance, all
the time, it’s all to be love-making and sex, but it has to be to your tune
and when you say so, and if the woman doesn’t happen to be ready all
the time, any time, and remember the bull and the cows, if you please,
the bull always waiting and ready, damn him, but he has to wait on the
mood of the cows as any farmer knows, and it’s only the human female
who has to deny her very nature and pretend and pretend, and then you
can’t believe the truth. Oh, you men, you must have nature itself the way
you’d like to have it, you can’t and won’t face the truth—”

“Elinor!” he shouted, “have you lost your mind?”

She flung her braid over her shoulder and gave him a glorious and be-
wildered smile. “No,” she said softly, “and I feel wonderful! I do believe
I have wanted for years to say that. Now I’ve said it.” She put her clasped
hands on her breast. “Thank you, William, for giving me the chance.”

She took a deep breath, not a sigh, but the breath of freedom, and he

428

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Stared at her in stupefaction. ‘Why didn’t you say it years ago If you
wanted to?” he demanded.

, : “I didn’t dare,” she said strangely. “I used to be afraid of how you
would feel.”

“And you’re not afraid of me now?” he said rather sadly.

She shook her head and the waves of her soft hair parted on either
side and fell over her ears. “No, I suppose because the children have
grown up. I can’t think of any other reason.”

“I don’t understand you,” he confessed. “In spite of loving you and you
only all these years I don’t understand you.”

She rose and went over to him and putting her arms about him she
pressed his head into her fragrant bosom.

“It was often completely right and wonderful,” she whispered. “Most
wonderful of all, it still is. Better really, because now it’s just for you and
me. It’s so nice that God has arranged for younger women to take over
the worry of having the babies.”

He buried his face between her breasts. “Oh, Elinor,” he muttered,
forgiving her for everything. “I’ll never have time enough with you.”

“All the time there is,” she said cheerfully. She bent to kiss him fomly
but briefly upon the lips. “Good night, don’t sit up all hours.”

She pulled herself away and detected a speculative look that he per-
mitted to creep into his eyes and she laughed. “No, no,” she said airily,
“not tonight, not with this house full of children, Madge likely to be taken
to the hospital at any moment, and that dreadful dog coming back—”

She shuddered and went away quickly, pausing at the door to say one
last word, “I do thank you, William-”

“Don’t thank me,” he muttered, going back to his papers, and forcing
his mind away from her. Ail that stuff she had poured out, there was no
telling how much of it was truth, and how much of it was thought up on
the spur of the moment. There was something of Jessica in every woman.

Nevertheless he felt quite sleepless, and when he heard the car Just be-
fore midnight, he tiptoed to the front door which was standing open, Madge
had not gone to the hospital, and the upstairs was dark except for the
night light in the hall.

“Be quiet, you two,” he said in a low voice when the car stopped.
What s wrong?” Susan asked with something just under her usual voice.
“Madge isn’t feeling well,” he replied. “What’s that?”

For between the two of them they were dragging an immense dark
body out of the rear of the car.

“It’s the dog,” Susan said, “Fete had to kill it.”

“What an extraordinary day!” William muttered under his breath.
“What are you going to do with it?”

“Put it here behind the lilacs until tomorrow, Pete,” Susan said. “It
will smell up the car.”

Pete did not reply. He dragged the huge corpse along the ground by

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 429

the forepaws, flung it behind the lilacs, and then came up' the steps looking
depressed. never thought I’d kill a dawg.”

‘^Corne into the library,” William commanded softly. “What on earth
happened?”

They tiptoed after him and he closed the door,

“I want a drink,” Pete said. His dark face was somber and Susan looked
at him with troubled eyes.

William went to a small cupboard in the panelled wall and took out a
bottle of whiskey and three glasses. He poured a small amount of the
liquor in each and they drank slowly.

“Well?” he inquired.

“You tell it, Susan,” Peter said.

He sat with his knees apart, his head hanging while she talked, his full
lower lip thrust out.

“Jessica was asleep when we got there,” Susan said. “Herbert went up-
stairs alone first, of course. He looked in and then he came down again.
‘She’s got the dog loose in there,’ that was what he said: 1 don’t dast to go
in,’ he said. So of course Pete said he would go up. We all went up, Herbert
last.”

She told it well, struggling as William could see with her own horror.
They went up the stairs without making any noise, thinking, she said, that
they would take the dog away without waking Jessica or the baby.

“Does she always let the dog loose when you’re late?” she asked Herbert.

“She keeps him on a long rope, as a reg’lar thing,” Herbert replied.

But Jessica had waked at once. “Is that you, Herbert?” she called.

“Answer,” Susan commanded him.

“Yes, it’s me,” Herbert said in a placating mild voice. He held the door.
“I tried to come in before, Jessica, but I heard the dog loose.”

“You can’t come in, Herbert,” Jessica called back. “I have the dog loose
on purpose.”

Herbert turned his big pale face toward them. There was a naked
electric light in the ceiling blazing down on them.

“Now what’ll I do?” he begged.

“Tell her we’re here to get the dog,” Susan said.

The dog was growling horribly just inside the door. They could hear its
rasping breath drawn in after each growl.

“Miss Susan is here with Mr. Peter,” Herbert said placatingly. “They’ve
come for the dog, Jessica. Mr. Peter wants it back again.”

Jessica did not answer. They listened and heard nothing but the growling
of the dog.

“Let me open the door,” Peter said. “The dawg knows me.” He flung the
door open but the dog sprang at him. Standing on its hind feet it was as
high as his shoulders and he grappled with it, holding its jaws shut with
one hand.

Herbert closed his eyes and leaned against the wall, moaning, but Susan

430

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

sprang forward and dragged the dog’s hind legs so that it fell on the floor.

“Smart girl,” Pete gasped. “Hold ’em down. I’ll choke the Ilf e out of the
damn beast.” ^

: “And. that is what he did,” 'Susan said in thC' library, facing her father
steadfastly, , “I held the dog’s hind legs and Pete choked him dead. And
then I heard Jessica. She was saying over and over, 'Kill them, Pirate-
kill them all!’ I was so angry when I heard it, and I yelled at her. 'You
shut up, Jessica!’ That’s what I yelled. It was like a room full of crazy
people, Herbert crying out loud and Jessica saying that over and over
and me yelling at her. She was sitting up in bed ail dressed up in a silk
nightgown and a fancy bed jacket, pink sheets on her bed, if you please.
Only the baby kept on sleeping.”

“What did you do when the dog was dead?” William asked. His mouth
felt dry as leather and he sipped the whiskey again.

“Pete dragged the body down the stairs and we stuffed it in the car
and came home,” Susan said.

“Yeah,” Pete said in his heavy voice, “and I never thought I would
kill a dawg. I always liked that dawg. I never should of brought it here.
I should of left it at home where it belonged. She had that dawg all strung
up tense like and ready to kill anybody. "Why, the way that dawg was
tonight it would have eaten Herbert alive. Lucky for him we went along.”

“I suppose you saved his life,” Susan said, “if it was worth saving. I
doubt it I despise men who cry. I never cry myself,”

“Let’s go to bed,” William said. “I am exhausted.”

He was waked the next morning late by Elinor’s cool hand on his fore-
head,

“Wake up, Grandfather,” she said gaily.

He dragged himself upward out of sleep. “Don’t tell me Madge— ”

“A little girl, named Elinor,” she said too brightly.

“Another girl,” he exclaimed, waking up.

“Too many?” she inquired.

“Depends,” he said, yawning. He got up and shuffled into his slippers.

She paused at the door and blew him a kiss. “You look tired. Would
you like to stay in bed this morning? Herbert’s not here,”

“Oh no, I’ll get up,” he grumbled. “Herbert’s not here, eh? Susan tell
you about the dog?”

“She came in my room last night and waked me up to tell me,” Elinor
said. “Terrifying, wasn’t it? I’m glad it’s dead. Jessica will be better, I do
believe.”

“I don’t know,” he mumbled from the bathroom.

She did not hear him. She was already on her way downstairs, her
spirits high because of the new baby. A girl was what she had wanted, he
could see. His own spirits sank strangely. This was not going to be a good
day. They had not seen the end of Jessica, not by a long shot.

It was the middle of the morning, however, before he knew the worst.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

431

After breakfast, not having seen any of his children, he withdrew again
into his library, taking care not to look out of the window to see whether
the dog lay behind the lilacs. Susan was- still asleep' and Pete was probably
the same. The young these days seemed able to sleep ail day, a sort of
escape, he felt, from the insoluble problems of the times. No one knew
how to stop war, corruption in government was monstrous, women went
crazy and dogs went mad, therefore the young slept.

At eleven o’clock when Elinor had just left for the hospital to see Madge
and her baby, he himself declining to go before the baby was twenty-four
hours old and the first rawness off, he heard a scream in the kitchen.
The back window of the library opened upon the kitchen garden and the
morning being warm he had opened it to make a current of air. He was
therefore able to hear Bertha scream loudly again and then again. He
* flung down his pen, but before he could get up she came rushing into the
room in her stocking feet as she always was in the kitchen, especially in
summer when her feet swelled.

*‘Mr, Asher, sir, oh, Mr. Asher— ”

She sobbed, her face was purple,
he said sharply.

/^Herbert, sir, he’s on the phone, Jessica— she’s gone someting awful—”

William picked up the receiver on his desk and heard a strange noise.

‘‘Herbert!” he shouted.

“Oh, Mr. Asher,” Herbert moaned, “please can you come quick?”

“I cannot,” William said firmly. “I must first know what is wrong.”

“It’s Jessica, sir— can’t you hear her?”

“I hear a dog barking,” William said.

“That’s her!” Herbert shouted* “She’s down on her hands and knees
going round and round the room. She’s actin’ like a dog, she’s stark ravin’
crazy. I don’t know what to do. And the baby is hungry. I can’t get her to
feed the baby. She tries to bite it I can’t stop her goin’ round and round
barkin’—”

“Oh, my God,” William cried. “I’ll call an ambulance. Good gracious!
Watch her, Herbert— ”

But when he had called the doctor and told him and the ambulance
arrived, it seemed there was nothing for it except to go with it himself, for
the country roads were inexplicable and the quickest thing was simply to
leap in beside the driver. A nurse and an interne with a straitjacket sat in
the back by the stretcher.

He rode in silence while the lovely summer morning shone down peace-
fully from heaven upon the troubled earth.

“That was some dog lyin’ there dead under them Hlacs,” the driver re-
marked.

“It is to be buried this morning,” William said in a distant voice. It
would be impossible to explain all that had happened, and he felt too
exhausted inwardly to make an attempt. It was simply not to be under-
stood.

432

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

**Tiiafs the trouble with living near a highway and keepin’ a dog,” the
driver said amiably.

“Yes,” William agreed, too exhausted to explain.

“It must have took a truck, though, to kill that dog,” the driver sug-
gested.

“I suppose so,” William said vaguely and then uncomfortable.

The driver gave up and was silent until they drove up to the farmhouse.

William got out, followed by the interne and the nurse and the door was
opened by the driver. At the foot of the stair William paused. “Herbert?”
he called. The bedroom door opened and they could hear a strange low
growling from upstairs. Herbert came out with the baby in his arms.

“She’s quieter,” he whispered. “She’s layin’ under the bed.”

William turned to the nurse. “You had better go up without me. She
knows me and might get excited.”

He was uncomfortable indeed. What if Jessica should recognize him and
renew her charges? He sat down in the small parlor, now ill-kept and dusty.
Herbert had made it a place to change his clothes, and his shoes and
undergarments were scattered about, a piteous place, he thought, looking
about at the touching effects that Jessica had tried to create, a little world
for herself in which she had nevertheless gone mad.

They were bringing her downstairs now, in a white coat of some kind,
the sleeves tied around her. He caught a dreadful glimpse of her as she
passed the door, her head down slung, and her jaw slavering. She was
muttering in her throat, a rasping guttural growl, and they passed the door
without her lifting her head. He rose and stood by the open window and
when they put her into the ambulance, she snapped at the inteme’s wrist
suddenly, and he slapped her.

“You’d bite, would you?” he said not unkindly. He strapped her down
upon the stationary cot within and the nurse took her place. The driver
climbed into the seat and then shouted.

“Ain’t you cornin’ back?”

William shook his head. “I will stay and see how things are here and
the man can drive me back later.”

The driver nodded and the ambulance rumbled away. The house was
still. There was not even the sound of Herbert weeping. William went
upstairs after a moment and found him sitting in the chair, rocking back
and forth, the baby asleep in his arms. The room was frightful. Some
sort of human battle had taken place. The bed clothes were tossed over the
floor, the pictures had fallen from the walls, glass broken, and the curtains
were torn from the windows. In the midst of this wreckage Herbert sat
in the rocking chair, the baby in his arms, rocking back and forth and the
child was placidly asleep.

“How did you feed it?” William asked stupidly.

“I mixed some milk and water and sugar and fed her with a spoon, sir,”
Herbert replied. He seemed calm but exhausted. “Do you want me to
drive you home?” he asked.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

433

'**Wliat about the baby?” William countered,

‘^Now that: she*s full she can just sleep in the back .seat,” Herbert, said.

So with no more words they went downstairs, Herbert put the child in
a rolled blanket in the back seat of his worn car and they went slowly
away from the house,

“You*ll understand I can’t' come back for a day or, so, sir,” Herbert
said. “Fil have to get the baby into a home somewhere.”

“Gertainly,” William said. “But wouldn’t this be a good time to have
Bertha retire and come here and take care of the child?”

Herbert’s immense white face took on a look of rocklike stubborness.
“I’ll never have her in the house, sir, not while I live.”

“But Bertha has done nothing,” William protested.

“I don’t know what she has done nor what she hasn’t,” Herbert said
darkly, his little sad eyes on the rutted road. “All I know is that Jessica
couldn’t abide her and so I can’t. Something she did to my girl, and I shan’t
lay eyes on her in my house.”

“Does that mean you want to quit your job?” William asked.

“No, it just means I don’t want her in my house,” Herbert repeated.

“Is it not Bertha’s house?” William suggested,

“It’s to be Jessica’s and mine as soon as the old woman dies,” Herbert
declared.

William was silent, there was no fathoming Herbert’s mood. He would
be glad to get home.

“Or again,” Herbert said half a mile later, “it might be them nuns.
Jessica was never willin’ to give herself up to herself. There was somethin’
about nature that she thought was dirty and that’s the nuns. Still, it was
Bertha sent her to the convent, where her father never wanted her to go.
She liked her father, Jessica did. He was good to her.”

William could remember Heinrich very well, a disorganized kindly man
who without Bertha to direct him would certainly have ended as a drunk-
ard or a beggar. But that was perhaps the tragedy of women like Bertha,
the managers to whom the weak turn, upon whom they cling, and whom
unfailingly they hate, and this, too, could not be explained to Herbert,

“Well,” he said vaguely, “One never knows. I suppose the first thing is
to get Jessica well again, if it’s possible,”

Then Herbert said the incomprehensible thing. “She ain’t sick, sir, she’s
just tryin’ to win.”

“Win what?” William asked.

“What we went through last night.”

He would like to have cried out not to he told what had gone on, but
he saw it was necessary for Herbert to tell him. Sooner or later Herbert
would insist upon telling what had taken place in that room after the
guardian dog was dead, after Susan and Peter had gone away and there
was no one left to stand between the man and the woman. It was plain
enough as he told it. Even so soon after childbirth the endless war of the
ages between male and female had burst into battle in that lonely room,

434

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

far from any human habitation, so that Jessica screaming and crying could
be heard by no one. No, and Herbert, too, was not heard, his slow temper
rising at last to crisis when he knew that she was defenseless, and no one
could hear the bellowing of the buU, alone at last with the weaker female.
Jessica did not yield. She leaped from bed to floor, she clung to the cur-
tains, struggling to throw herself from the windows, but he had nailed them
shut. The curtains fell about her and she hid in them until he tore them
from her. She clung to the table, to the beds, until he wrenched her hands
away, pounding upon her knuckles with his clenched fists. He beat her
with the rung of a broken chair at last until she fell writhing upon the
floor, screaming with pain, and still as tireless, thin as she was, as though
she were made of twisted wires. He imprisoned her beneath his vast body
there upon the floor and held her down, his hands clutching her wrists, his
tight mouth pressed upon her turned cheek, his loins fastened upon hers.

“And all the time,” he said mournfully now in the morning light driving
carefully along the road so that the sleeping baby would not be jarred from
the seat, “All the time I was takin’ only what was my rightful due.”

William listened, fixed in solemn horror. There was simply no way to
explain to Herbert that what he had done was worse than murder.

“When it was all over,” Herbert was saying, “I lifted her up and laid
her on the bed. I thought she had fainted and I was scared. I went in the
bathroom to get her smellin* salts. She always had smeilin’ salts like Miss
Emma. When I came back—” his chin began to quiver and he cleared his
throat. “When I come back into the room she was on her hands and knees
on the floor, swingin’ her head low, and when I spoke to her, she— barked,
like the dog.”

William drew a deep sigh. Another five miles and they would be home.

“It is all incomprehensible,” he said at last, “quite, quite incom-
prehensible.”

But he had a dreadful fear that if he really tried, he could understand,
and to understand was, for the moment, simply too much for him.

When he got home he looked involuntarily for the carcass of the dog. It
was gone. Susan and Pete had buried it, then! Now perhaps there would
be peace. He went upstairs to wash his hands and change his clothes for no
particular reason except that he wanted to look as well as to feel differently,
a change surely for the better. On the stairs he met Susan and noticed
that her eyes were at once remote and luminous. He made no reference
to the dog.

“Where is your mother?” he inquired mildly.

“She is in the herb garden,” Susan replied and went on her way.

When he was properly changed into an old suit, newly cleaned and
comfortable, he went in search of Elinor. She was as Susan had said in
the herb garden, a square of greenery in the midst of the kitchen garden
behind the house. She was on her knees, choosing slowly and with care a

VOICES IN THE- HOUSE

435

small -bouquet of herbs, designed he supposed for the delectation 'of the
meat she had planned for their dinner. He walked toward her, lighting a
cigarette and pretending an amiable ' leisure.

'She -looked up. “Welir '

‘Well, Jessica has been taken to the hospital-in a straitjacket/* He said It
gently, low enough so that Bertha could not hear. Elinor' would have to tell '
her.'

“A straitjacket!” Elinor cried in high concern.

He described the dreadful morning and she listened, frightened and yet
unbelieving, as he could see. She knelt there on the ground, protesting in
silence while he told her what he had done.

“Somebody had to do something,” he said in final irritation. “Even Her-
bert agrees to that. The doctors will decide whether Jessica is or is not
insane, I hope she is. Insanity is the only possible excuse for all that has
happened. If she is not insane, she must be a devil of malevolence.”

This made an impression, he was grateful to notice. The sparkling pro-
test faded from Elinor’s eyes.

“Oh dear,” she sighed. She sniffed the herbs and rose to her feet. “I
wish I knew whether it’s the right thing.”

“For the present it is,” he said firmly. He himself felt a strange relief
in the thought that Jessica was safely locked up.

“I suppose so,” Elinor said. “Of course they have all sorts of ways of
curing people now— even if she is insane.”

“Yes,” he agreed, and then very guardedly, he asked, “How’s Madge?”

“Perfectly normal,” Elinor replied. “That is, she is well enough phys-
ically. I thought she seemed a little queer with me. I suppose she is just
tired.”

He felt his cheeks grow hot. “I am tired myself. I have had just about
enough of queer women,” he said with unusual energy. “If Madge feels
queer I had rather not hear about it. How is the baby?”

“I’m sorry you’re tired,” Elinor said. “As for the baby, she is simply
adorable, the prettiest of all the babies.”

“Then I am glad she is named after you,” he said gallantly.

She flashed him one of her looks, fully appreciative, a little humorous,
meaning isn’t it rather late in the day for this sort of speech. He raised his
eyebrows and noticed that her skin still stood the sunshine remarkably
well. She had no wrinkles, not even a delicate tracery under the ivory
surface. He felt gratified that he had been able at least until now to keep
her life serene enough for beauty.

“I LOATHE men who weep,” Susan said with unutterable loathing.
“Thank God Pete is a real man. I would hate Herbert, myself, if I were
Jessica, I swear.”

436

AMERICAN' TRIETYCH

It was evenings and William was waiting for dinner. Elinor was in the
kitchen, Bertha had retired to her attic room upon hearing the news of
Jessica, and Susan was setting the table.

*‘Ah,” William said to encourage Susan and yet not to commit himself.
It was all very well but there could be extremes either way. ^‘Is Peter not
coming for dinner?”

“No,” Susan said. “He decided to go home this afternoon.”

“Nothing wrong?”

“Not if you and Mother behave,” Susan said firmly.

He avoided this portent. She wanted something and so it was she, he
very well knew, who had sent Peter home. She wanted him out of the
way while she took her parents in hand. How well he recognized the signs!
He got up and sauntered toward the door.

“You’d better help your mother with the dishes after dinner, Bertha is
prostrated.”

“There it is again,” Susan replied. “Getting prostrated! People are so
soft.”

And if anyone looked soft, William thought, gazing at her, it was this
luscious creature who was his daughter, this girl with the tender air, her
large brown eyes fringed with black lashes uselessly long and thick, her
slender round figure, hinting plumpness that was like his own mother’s, a
voice as deep and soft as slumbrous music. But that was the fashion of
girls these days and it all meant nothing. He had not the slightest idea of
the real Susan since Pete had attached himself in his singularly lackadai-
sical and desultory manner to the family. Yet apparently it was to be
permanent.

He seized upon an instant’s daring, “Are you really going on with this
preposterous maniage?”

Susan folded three stiff Imen table napkins into fanciful shapes. “That
is what I want to talk about tonight. I am glad that Bertha is prostrated.
We’ll have perfect privacy.”

“Wait until after dinner,” be begged, pausing at the door. “My digestion
is not what it used to be. Peace, please, at our meal.”

He left her, and somewhat heavily he went outdoors and walked back
and forth upon the terrace, suspending thought. Long ago he had learned
the trick of self-suspension, a defense agamst criminals pervading his inner
life. He had been compelled to learn how to send them off into the outer
air, their evil faces fading away like Cheshire cats, in order that he might
return whole to his household to play with the children, to examine the
defects of a reluctant furnace, to read a book he had laid aside the night
before, or finally and most important of all, to make love to his Elinor.
Now in the long summer twilight he exercised his habit and felt a refreshing
inner quiet steal forth. The garden was lovely in the dusk, the early sum-
mer fiowers bright against the stone wall. It was weather for roses, the
only flowers whose name he infallibly remembered. Whatever happened

VOICES IN' THE HOUSE

437 ,

witMn a man’s house,, the wails stood, the .trees grew . high and flowers
bloomed..

But the foundations could be shaken nevertheless. The evening went on
and Susan was merciless. The meal was pleasant, delightful so far as the
food went, he made tentative veiled references to the exhaustion of his
day, and yet he perceived that Susan had no intention of sparing Mm. The
young were single-minded, they thought only of themselves. .Glancing at
his daughter occasionally between moments of enjoyment of a lamb' curry
that was really superb, he muttered within Mmself and strictly to himself
that he might as well enjoy his dinner, for what was coming afterwards was
inescapable. He knew the look of inexorable determination upon Susan’s
beautiful mouth, he had seen it first when she was less than a year old, in
conflict then as now with him, beginning, he recalled, with the day upon
which he had insisted that she eat her spinach. She had not eaten it. Instead
she had brushed the dish to the floor with one swift movement of her then
fat right hand. The hand now was very pretty, slender and well-kept, the
nails coral red, and upon the third finger he saw for the first time a diamond
ring, a solitaire of size. When she saw him looking at her hand she flashed
the diamond in his eyes like a lantern.

“Like it?”

“I’ve seen others,” he said drily.

“It’s very nice,” Elinor said, hastening to make amends for him by
generosity.

“Where did Ozark Pete get the money for that?” he grumbled. There
was no use being delicate with Susan. Girls nowadays did not know what
delicacy was. Jessica had modeled herself on the young ladies of another
day. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ . '

“You’d be surprised how much money you can make in a garage,”
Susan said complacently. “Besides, we bought it on time.”

“Oh, Susan,” her mother exclaimed.

“What?” Susan asked.

“But your engagement ring! On borrowed money!”

“I didn’t want the small size,” Susan said.

“Get what you want, get what you want,” William said.

“Okay, Dad—”

“Even your English is corrupted,” he grumbled. “A college education
can’t stand up against a garage, I suppose.”

He saw he had gone far enough for the present. Her dark eyes burned
with fury upon his face. He shrugged his shoulders slightly. “I won’t quarrel
at the table. There’ll be no punches pulled later, though.”

“None,” Susan promised.

He rose from the meal and without conscience he left the table and
dishes to the two women, and proceeded to smoke a quiet pipe in the east
parlor. There in that peaceful place, ail children and servants removed,
he reflected upon the strange human phenomenon of modern times, the

438

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tough guy Peter, and millions more like him, uncivilized and ignorant, a
magnificent body and no brain, or if a brain then so well concealed beneath
mannerless behavior and uncouth speech that it might as well be non-
existent. He felt sorry for his own sons, Winsten, the young father, molded
in a pattern outworn, and Edwin, the intellectual, who could not survive,
certainly, unless law prevailed. If ever law broke down beneath the assaults
of revolution, inevitably it would be Peter who was the revolutionist and
never Edwin, and certainly not Winsten, and Edwin would be liquidated.
That was the modern word for murder. Winsten might be allowed to live
if he conformed, and he would conform, fearful for his wife and his chil-
dren. Edwin would never conform and so he would be killed. William
savored the harsh old-fashioned word. Killed was the truth of it, and liqui-
dated was the lie. Peter might hate to kill a dog, which was his slave, but
he would not hate to kill a man more intelligent than he, more educated
than he, who at some future and perfectly possible time might try to up-
hold the tables of the law when Ozark Pete wanted them broken. And
could Susan not understand this possibility, and in the day to come would
she stand beside the brute or would she choose the blood to which she was
born? He did not know. A woman could not be counted upon when it came
to love.

Somber thoughts upon a summer night!

“And why, pray, are you sitting in the dark?” Susan demanded in her
velvet voice, so soft and deep and yet unrelenting.

“Thinking,” he replied.

She did not ask what thoughts. Instead she went about turning on one
light after another, until the large quiet room was blazing. Probably she
did not care what he thought,

“I don’t like to hurt you,” Susan said sweetly in the midst of light.
She sat down on the couch, leaned her elbow upon her hand and curled
her feet under her. There in her apple green frock, short-sleeved and round
at the neck, the full skirt billowing about her, she looked a child, a dreaded
child, William thought, too well loved, too much indulged, too clever, too
adorable.

Knowing through the experience of her years that she liked to arouse
concern, he avoided this direct attack.

“By the way, I meant to ask, where did you bury the dog?” He ac-
knowledged to himself the morbidity of the question, the desire to know
once and for aM that there was a definite end to the despicable creature,

“Pete took him out into the country,” Susan said. “He threw him down
the old marble quarry.”

The old marble quarry was filled with water to an unknown depth.
Long ago, in a generation past, it had been used as a swimming hole by
the sons of farmers until a boy had drowned so deep that no dragging
could bihag his body to the surface. The quarry had then been forbidden.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

439

aiB glad that the beast, was not put into our .ground soinewherc,’^
William said, ■ " .

, ^That dog was too big to bury,” Susan said indifferently, ^Tete said it
would have taken him half a day to ' dig the hole. Still, he was angry about
it—a good dog spoiled.”

“A savage beast,” 'William said decisively.

Silence fell, light and tense,, necessary to be broken quickly.

«What do you plan that will hurt us?” Elinor asked. She had come In
while Susan was turning on the lights and had taken her usual chair. Now,
contrary to habit, she was smoking a cigarette while she sipped her coffee.

‘^Perhaps we cannot be hurt,” William said.

*'Oh yes, you can,” Susan declared, ‘'but it can’t be helped. I know you
are disappointed in me, but I guess you understand that I am not going
to finish college,”

He had feared it. She had hinted as much at the seashore and when she
came home he had noticed a finality in her behavior, a definite return,
complete in intention. Neither he nor Elinor spoke. Susan tossed her short
hair from her face and toyed with her ring.

“I shall marry Pete right away,” she said.

"Oh, no,” Elinor began, but Susan put up her hands.

"Mother, I don’t want a wedding.”

"Oh, Susan,” Elinor cried.

"Pete would look siliy~I know it No, don’t say a word, either of you.
I know every word you would say. I know what you think of Pete. I can
see him with your eyes every time you look at him. That’s why I sent him
away today. I want to wrestle with you alone. I know how you feel about
him, I tell you.”

The dark eyebrows leveled in a furious frown above her brown eyes.

"And you don’t care?” Elinor asked.

"I do care,” Susan said. "But I shan’t let it change me toward Pete. I
shall marry him.”

"When?” William asked with dry lips.

"Any day, the first day we can,” Susan said.

Silence fell again, and this, William thought, was the end of their chil-
dren! For this, one built a house and made it home; for this, one worked
and denied pleasure, waked in the night~he remembered how the child
Susan grew thirsty always in the early hours after midnight, when he
was in his first deep sleep. Night after night he had got up out of bed,
groaning, to fetch the cupful of water, taking a small share of responsibility
that Elinor might be spared, and yet it was not small for he was of the
tense mind that once waked could not easily sleep again so that the brief
service drained away from him an hour or more of rest. Year after year
it went on, and a cup of water set at her bedside did not answer the purpose.
She needed to make sure of his readiness and his presence. It was more
than a cup of water.

440

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Tell me why you love Peter?” he asked in a coaxing voice. “If I could
understand that, I might find it easier to have you leave us. For you are
leaving us in a very total sense when you marry him.”

He caught a hauntingly childish terror in Susan’s eyes as he spoke these
words.

“Oh, no,” Elinor said quickly, “she can always come back. Marriage
needn’t be permanent nowadays. People get divorces.”

He was amazed at this speech. Elinor had always been merciless toward
divorce, always, she said, the woman’s fault. She refused to believe that
any man could not be held, as women put it, if the wife tried.

“I shall never divorce Pete,” Susan said. “No matter what he does, it’s
permanent.”

“Tell me why you love him,” William repeated.

The question embarrassed Susan strangely and she did not reply. She
bit her red lower lip, she examined her nails.

“He is not at all the sort of young man we had imagined you would
choose,” William went on. “I don’t mind so much your leaving college
unfinished. I realize that time is shortened these days for the young. With
another war threatening it is quite natural, perhaps. But Peter is foreign to
us, and so in a measure he must be to you, or so we imagine.”

He kept his voice calm, his manner judicial and as far as possible un-
prejudiced.

“After all, we know you better than you think,” he went on again, to
give her plenty of time. “I don’t believe in the Oriental fashion of choosing
the persons whom one’s children marry, and yet one does get to know
one’s child.”

She said in a small choked voice, “You get to know me in a way—maybe
you do. You know I don’t like liver and onions, you know my favorite
color is green, that I like to play tennis and don’t like mathematics— that
sort of thing. But you don’t know what I am thinking— and feeling.”

Her voice failed and she swallowed hard against tears.

“There are things we cannot know unless you tell us,” he agreed gravely.
He longed to reach out his hand to her, draw her to his knee as he used to
do when she was a child, to stop her tears. But she was a woman now.
Another man might do that but not he.

And Elinor sat silent, lighting one cigarette from another. Did she under-
stand, ought not she to understand? He cast her a reproachful look which
she caught and rejected. Manage this your own way, her eyes said. Well,
he would. Susan could not be entirely remote from the child he had known
and loved. She had not been too complex. She had been a direct child,
ready of temper, quick with affection, not nearly so complex for that mat-
ter, as Edwin. She had never had his dark silences. It was only since Pete
had come that she was changed.

“Where did you meet Peter?” he inquired and was shocked to realize
that he had never asked the question before.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

44!

“At a dance, a blind date—”

It could happen, he reflected, as she went on with her story, In such
times as these when all classes were churned together by war* Pete had
come back from the Pacific, and before he went home he had stopped to
see a friend, a buddy, in Poughkeepsie, a town boy whom Susan had met
through her roommate, a nice boy who was going to Yale. Pete had fought
beside him upon a distant island and he had once saved Pete’s life,

Susan laughed now in the middle of the story, “It ought to have been
the other way around* Pete is so huge, and Eliot is so small and-oh, exactly
so! His father is the Episcopal minister but he’s not the least like most
minister’s sons, although I guess he is going to be a preacher, at that Any-
way, Pete was barging up one of those hills on Okinawa, all ready to make
a hero of himself when Eliot, who was scared to death-says so himself-
was sneaking up behind, sheltering behind Pete, really, holding his rifle
ready to shoot at anything he saw, and of course he saw the enemy first
and potted him.”

Her voice was suddenly normal and her eyes dried. “Pete will never for-
get that. Eliot comes half way to his shoulder and Pete can swing him off
the ground with one arm.”

She was amused.

“But you don’t care for Eliot,” Elinor said quietly.

Susan put back her hair with both hands, restlessly. “Oh, who could?
He’s such a shrimp. Pete’s strong— if you could have seen the way he
caught that dog! It was like fighting a bear. He clenched his fist around
its jaws and bent its head back until I could hear the bones crack.”

“Susan!” Elinor cried, shuddering,

Susan looked at her mother with strange eyes. “That makes you sick,
doesn’t it, Mother? It doesn’t make me sick, though. That’s the difference
between your generation and mine. It’s what makes me have to love some-
one like Pete. With him I let go, don’t have to care how I talk or what I
do. What you two can’t seem to realize is that everything has changed. The
world isn’t what you thought it was— or what you told me it was. It’s another
world and nothing can stop that, and it’s I who have to live in the world.
Pete knows what I mean. He says it’s only toughness that counts now and
being able to fight for yourself. He’s right. All the old soft stuff is gone.”

“Yet Eliot—” William hinted.

“That was only an accident,” Susan said quickly. “It doesn’t change
anything. Eliot says himself that he didn’t plan it, he was scared to death.
He says now he doesn’t know how he did it, and he wasn’t even thinking
of Pete.”

She leaped to her feet and walked about the room, swinging her wide
green skirts. “It’s such a rest to me to be with Pete. He doesn’t care about
anything— manners or small talk or any of the pretty-pretty stuff.”

“He doesn’t even care about being clean,” Elinor remarked with caustic.

Susan turned on her. “No, he doesn’t! It’s not important to him. He

442

■AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

likes dirt. I know what he means, too. When you’ve been bathed every day
of your life and shampooed and scrubbed and made to wipe your feet
when you come in and put on overshoes when you go out, dirt is wonderful!
I tramped into his house with as much mud as I liked. If I wanted to bathe,
I took a bath, if I didn’t nobody cared. I could eat any way I liked, any-
where I liked, anything I liked, I could talk or not talk, swear if I wanted
to— that’s Pete’s way and I like it.”

“You have never really told us about Peter’s home,” Elinor said.

Susan looked at them, one and then the other, doubting, as William
could see, whether she could trust them enough.

“Tell us,” he urged, but gently.

She took the step against doubt and earnestly they tried to follow. “It’s
a shack of a house, you would say,” she began, “but there are plenty of
rooms, they kept building as the children came.”

A wooden house lost in a forest of trees, two miles away from the
highway and Pete’s garage, a rough hillside farm, crops scraped from the
earth by antiquated machinery, so that the children had little enough to eat
and yet somehow on the energetic air and the pure water they grew tall and
strong, though without a pound of flesh to spare, six boys and two girls.
But Peter was the youngest of them all, so that the dilapidated house was
empty when she went there, except for the father, the mother, and one of
the sisters whose husband had been killed somewhere in Burma, which they
thought was the name of a town, and the sister’s children, three of them,
all boys.

The house was one story, a string of rooms, the main one in the middle,
the living room, dining room and kitchen all together, a long, ramshackle
room full of broken down furniture that was worn to the shape of big lank
bodies, the sinking chairs comfortable with quilts and milkweed cushions.
There was no yard, a small vegetable garden came up by the house on one
side and the fields on the other, and chickens and several grey geese ran
over the warped wooden porch floor.

At first Susan had thought the house filthy, but as she stayed she dis-
covered that it was clean in its fashion, without paint, the mattresses on
the beds of fresh com husks, or, since she had the spare room, of feathers.
There were no books except the family Bible and a few comics, nobody
thought of reading, there was no music except that which Pete made upon
his guitar when he felt moved, and a bath was to be had in the brook a
quarter of a mile away or in a wash tub in the woodshed. Old Mr. Dobbs
talked of electricity but none of his family believed he meant it or cared
whether he did. Mrs. Dobbs cooked on an old iron stove and washed the
clothes outdoors with water heated in an iron pot over burning logs.

And yet, Susan said, she had liked it. It was peaceful there, the trees tall
and silent, the mountain water clear, and no need to talk unless one felt
like it. Pete’s sister, Maryanne, was sad, but she went on living, dealing
with her children swiftly and cleanly. She loved them heartily, and could be

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

443

angry witli them as heartily. There were no barriers between any of them.
Yon always knew where , yon were with , each one of them, and they were
.all strong and .lean and healthy. Learning was not necessary, life was
simple and easily lived, They admired her when she cut wild . flowers and
put them in a pitcher, even though none of them thought of doing it. In the
evenings they sat together on the porch, not talking or else talking, if they
wished. Nobody cared.

And what she could not tell her parents here in the east parlor was
that in that mountain setting love itself grew deep because there was noth-
ing else. To love or hate, to wake or sleep, to live or die, these were the
simple alternatives and one made one’s choice. The co,mplications of civili-
zation were as , though they had never been.

'^My generation is tired of civilization,” Susan said at last in a voice
strangely old. *We can’t understand why we must do all the things we are
told to do, even to die for something that is beyond our comprehension.
We are tired of being pushed around. Well, up there in the mountains, I
won’t be pushed around. I’ll just live, and with Pete.”

They listened to her in utter stillness, amazed, wounded, confounded.
Elinor put down her cigarette, her hand trembling.

*Tt isn’t even back to the gutter,” she said in a stifled voice, “it’s choos-
ing the gutter you’ve never known. It’s rejecting a civilization. You aren’t
even modem enough to understand. But why, but why—”

She was not asking a, question, she was crying out the mystery she could
not comprehend.

William went to her side and took the trembling hand. “Don’t grieve,
my darling.”

Susan whirled upon them, her eyes flaming. “Oh, you two, what do you
know? Only something that is dead and gone. I’ll be safe with Pete, do you
understand? Whatever happens, he’ll keep me safe. He’s tough, he’s strong,
he isn’t afraid of anybody. He’s got fists and he’s ready to fight”

“Oh, my God,” William whispered. “Is life as simple as that?”

He turned away and unable to resist an escape he went on into his library
and closed the door. There he sat down and put his head in his hands. His
daughter’s words had made the tomb of all in which he had believed. To
have fists, to be ready to fight, to hurl one’s self up a hill against an enemy,
any enemy, the folly of such simplicity crushed his heart. And so where was
intelligence fled, and who had killed in this generation the daring of the
spirit, the courage of the mind? Would there ever again be the resurrection
of human truth? Wherein had he failed as a man, and Elinor as a woman
that their child, their treasure, could so choose to hide herself in animal
retreat? Susan was as foolish as Jessica, her dreams as vain, her faith as
surely to be lost.

He got up and began the long pacing across the floor which marked
the thinking process in his most abstruse cases of the law. The child’s reason
was still there. Confused in her emotions, entangled by the subconscious

444

AMERICAN ' TRIPTYCH

fears of this generation at the endless prospect of wars ahead, a fear which
now concerned women as much as men, women whose whole foundation
must be in love and home, Susan still possessed her sane mind. If he could
separate her for a time, even a brief time, from Pete, if they could all go
away for a holiday somewhere, she and Elinor with him, go perhaps to
England, where he had been told the young were steadier, older in the
age of the nation than they were here, then she might yet be saved. She
was too childish to choose now the course of her events. He made up his
mind swiftly. He had business always waiting in England, he would make
it imperative and insist that they leave at once, immediately, tomorrow
if need be. And if she refused to go, he would compel her. His long dark
face set itself in grim lines, the look that criminals had learned to dread,
and he opened the door abruptly and faced his beloved foe.

“We are going to England,” he announced. He stood there, dangling
his pince-nez in his right hand. “I shall telephone for reservations on the
Queen Mary. The sea voyage will clear our minds and give us time. Well
go to England and see whether the young men and women there are think-
ing in terms of fists and fights.”

He looked from one surprised face to the other. “I don’t ask for agree-
ment. I shall demand obedience. We need perspective, all of us. I need
perspective on you, Susan, for at present you appear a fool. The world is
not so hopeless as you think. You have somehow happened upon a low
level but there are others. Not all young men are Ozark Petes, thank God.
Your brothers are proof.”

Susan drew up the corner of her full mouth in a sneer. “Those two?”
she muttered. “Do you call Winsten a man? He’s a papa, just a papa—”

“Hush,” Elinor said in a violent whisper. “Here he comes.” It was in-
deed Winsten, returning from the hospital. He stood in the doorway, look-
ing a little haggard, smiling at them with wan lips.

“The children have been good?” he inquired. He had put them to bed
early, before he went.

“I haven’t heard a word from them,” Elinor replied. “Have you had
dinner?”

“I dined in Manchester,” Winsten said. He came in and sat down and lit a
cigarette.

“How is Madge?” Elinor inquired. Someone had to ask the necessary
questions. William stood where he had stopped, and Susan was pouting.

“She is in excellent shape. The doctor says we may go home at the end
of the week.” Winsten said gratefully. “They are getting her on her feet
tomorrow. Seems strange, but everything is strange nowadays. We are all
doing things we thought were wrong yesterday.”

He smiled his wan smile again, caught a triumphant look upon Susan’s
face, turned to William.

“Have I interrupted something?”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

445

Susan got up decidedly. “Nothing! I am .going to bed Thafs all lust
that and nothing more, my friends!”.

She caught her circular skirt in her hands and danced out of the room
on noiseless feet, and William watching her understood perfectly that she
had no intention of obedience. ■ He stiffened himself, his back straightened
and he felt the angry blood rush dangerously through his veins. This was
the sort of thing that brought blood pressure to the danger point, the tech-
nique of the young for. hastening the death of the old. He forced himself
to relax, breathing deeply, not heeding the hospital conversation going on
between Winsten and his mother.

“Don’t you feel well, William?” Elinor asked after a moment or two.

“Yes, yes,” he answered impatiently. “Don’t mind me. What were you
saying, Winsten?” ' ■

“That it is fortunate I was bom just when I was,” Winsten said ear-
nestly. “I escaped the last war and I’ll be too old for the next one.”

William got to his feet. “It’s been an exhausting day, I think I do feel
tired.” He hesitated, remembering suddenly that now he would be leaving
Winsten alone with Elinor, and Winsten with his usual sense of duty might
feel it necessary, if his mother expressed anxiety, to repeat the absurd stuff
that Jessica had said about him to Madge. Then he felt weariness creep
over him like a pall.

“Good night,” he said abruptly, and bending he kissed Elinor’s cheek
and felt her hand reach up to his face. Enough was enough, he thought,
climbing the stairs, and today more than enough. It was a wonder he had
strength to earn their bread.

Some time in the night, in the deep night when he was so sunk in sleep
that Elinor’s hand upon his face, smoothing his cheek, seemed only a dream
left over from their earlier parting, he was impelled to waken. He heard
her voice summoning him from afar.

“William, wake up, darling— William— William— ”

“What—” he muttered, staggering upward out of the abyss.

She sat down on his bed, her silvery braids hanging over her bare shoul-
ders.. “William,, are you awake?” .■

:V,.''.'“Yes— yes— ”

“No, you’re not, poor thing. Oh, William, try!”

He hauled his consciousness out of the dark, hand over hand, opened
his eyes wide by force and stared at her painfully.

“What’s wrong?”

“I nearly didn’t wake you,” she whispered, “then I thought I must. 1
can’t take the responsibility alone,”

“Eh?” he demanded.

“Hush,” she whispered. “Come to the window, William. Not a sound,
mind you—”

446

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He got out of bed and she seized his hand and they stole to the window
and she parted the curtains.

‘'LookP' she whispered.

The light of the moon shone down upon the lawn in a pale mist. There
in the driveway he saw a car, Pete’s car. The young man was waiting
motionless beside it,

*‘There is a light in Susan’s room,” Elinor said. 'T have heard her moving
about for the last half hour. I heard her go up and I knew exactly what
was happening. I knew that Pete’s car would pul! into the driveway just
like that. It is four o’clock.”

He started impetuously for the door but she clung to him. ^Wait-wait!
It was such a beautiful idea that we go to England. But it is no use, don’t
you see? England can’t do anything for her, William, nor for Pete. For us,
maybe, yes indeed, but nobody can do anything for them, William, don’t
you see?”

“You aren’t going to let her ruin her life!” he whispered hoarsely.

She put her arms about his neck, “We must let her go, William. We
must just let her go and maybe then some day she will come back. If we
try to stop her she will die before she’ll come back.”

He was too perplexed to refute what she was saying. What indeed if she
were right?

She drew him gently back to the open window and they stood, waiting,
and there hand in hand, their hearts beating with the sorrow that only the
aging know, they watched the old, old play unfold itself, as it had for thou-
sands of years. The front door opened softly and Susan came out, lugging
two bags. Pete took them and put them in the back of the car, they moved
noiselessly together, shadowy figures in the mist, they embraced and clung
for one long instant, then they climbed into the car and slowly the car
crept over the gravel of the drive and passing through the gate faded away
into the night.

He became aware then of Elinor’s trembling. She was weeping! He took
her into his arms, pressing her close. When had she wept before? Not for
years! He was frightened, and he hated Susan. Let her go— let them all go,
so long as he held the beloved woman, who alone was his.

“I don’t know why we ever had children,” he muttered fiercely, his own
throat constricted.

He felt her strangling her tears, choking back her sobs, struggling against
breakdown, “Oh, cry,” he begged. “What does it matter with me? Do cry,
my darling!”

She shook her head and pulled away from him slightly. “I don’t want—
to~to cry. It’s too devastating—now— at my age.”

“Nonsense!”

“No, I know.” She wiped her eye on her ruffled sleeve and swallowed
once or twice. “I wonder—” she said after a moment

“What do you wonder?” he asked, all tenderness.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 447

Ske shook her head again' and' bit her tips and went on,

; ''I wonder if well ever be able to tel them that we watched them go-
and. let' them!”.

He smiled a bitter smle. 'It would break their hearts. What,, not oppose
them? It would spoil all the heroics.” '

She laughed trembling heartbroken laughter. "I suppose' you Ye right
We’l never tell them.” And turning to him suddenly she threw herself into
Ms arms and hid her face against his neck and cried desperately.

It was becoming clear, William told himself, that Herbert was' not. what
he had been. Usually he enjoyed the long ride to New York, especially in
the spring when the dogwoods spread through the woods a foam of white.
Now, however, the ride was more often than not an ordeal. Herbert, once
so stolid and calm a driver, was becoming erratic and reckless. Wiliam,
complaining yesterday to Elinor, had blamed the parkways.

"Once Herbert gets on the parkway,” he grumbled, "he seems to think
he can pass every car in sight. Fifty mles doesn’t satisfy him. His rate is
sixty, if he thinks I am asleep he gets as high as eighty. We’ve been stopped
half a dozen times in the last year.”

“Ifs not the parkways,” Elinor said. "It is J^sica. He had me call the
doctor at the asylum last week and ask if Jessica wasn’t well enough to
come home for good, so they can bring the baby home before she gets
any older. She’s almost three years old now, and she doesn’t remember
any home but the orphanage. It does seem a shame.”

Wiliam was reluctant to talk about Jessica, although during the years
that she had been put away, there had been talk, of course. He considered
her dangerous, remembering what she had said to Madge, and though he
had heard no more of it, Winsten and Madge seeming the same when
they came home for brief visits, now no more at Christmas since the fourth
chid, a boy, had arrived. Stll, they met once or twice a year, and he con-
tinued to feel an unconquerable reserve toward both Winsten and Madge,
even when nothing was said about Jessica. If she were mentioned Madge
showed only a mid interest, her children absorbiog her entire attention and
continuing as the sole theme of her conversation. He did notice, Wiliam
told himself, that she was no longer so insistent upon the chldren bestowing
upon him kisses of dutiful affection.

"What did the doctor say about Jessica?” William had inquired.

"He says that Jessica may try it for a while at home, if she wishes to do

"Does she wish it?” he asked.

"That is what we don’t know,” Elinor had replied . . .

The car swer\^ed dangerously around a curve and he cried out, “Herbert,
slow down!”

448

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Herbert slowed down to an aggravating crawl bnt William did not speak
again. The craw! would last only a few minutes. He allowed himself to be
absorbed in his papers and the speed crept up. When a sharp siren bleWs
William rejoiced to see a state policeman. Let the fellow deal with Herbert
as he would! He sat back, folded his arms and put on his legal look.
Herbert maintained his speed stubbornly for a few seconds and then pulled
to the side of the road. The motorcycle roared and stopped at the window.

“Who do you think you are?” the policeman bellowed at Herbert, who
presented only his profile. “Gan’t you read? Don’t you see what the signs
say? Goin’ seventy miles an hour!”

Herbert refused to reply. The policeman motioned to William to lower
the window. “Hey, you, whyn’t you tell him to hold down his speed?”

“I have repeatedly done so,” William said in a quiet voice.

“Whyn’t you fire him?” the policeman demanded.

“He has been with us a number of years,” William said.

The policeman snorted. “He’ll lose his license a number of years if this
goes on!”

William smiled. “I am afraid he deserves to do so.”

The policeman was only slightly mollified. “Where you goin’?”

“I am due at the city hall at three o’clock,” William said. “I am legal
counsel in the case of The City of New York versus Marty Malone.”

The policeman hesitated. “I oughtn’t to let you get by with this.”

“Perhaps I can get a ride with somebody and leave the car and my
chauffeur with you,” William suggested.

The policeman continued to hesitate. “No,” he said finally. “I’ll let you
go this time.” He leaned on the front window to attack Herbert again.
“But you, fatface, if I ever catch you speedin’ here again, and I’ll catch
you if you do, you’ll lose your job sure. You won’t have no license again
for a good long time. Haven’t I spoke to you before?”

“Maybe,” Herbert said tightly. His small mouth disappeared between
his cheeks.

“Maybe,” the policemen mocked, “maybe for sure, I guess! Well, it’s
the last time. Now take it easy.”

He waved them on, and William said nothing. It was possible that
Herbert could be frightened.

Late at his office, he hurried to his desk and found a telephone call from
Cousin Emma waiting for him. He was about to put it impatiently aside
when he remembered her extreme age and fragility and his responsibility
and so he ordered it put through. Across the city wires the trembling old
voice reached his ears shrilly.

“William, is that you?”

“Yes, Cousin Emma, what can I do for you?” He glanced at his watch.
At least she would not be long-winded. She was able to keep only one thing
on her mind these days.

“William, I have had a letter from Jessica.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

449

*‘What does she want?” he asked impatiently. Jessica was less than im-
portant at the moment

^'She wants to go home, William. She says she can’t stand the hoixid
place. She wants to see her little baby. She says the baby ought to come
home. She doesn’t think they are treating the baby right. The baby doesn’t
even know who she is.”

should think not,” William said drily. “She has never taken care of
it”

“Well, she wants to now,” Cousin Emma said shrilly. “I think you ought
to get her out of that horrid place.”

“I believe Elinor has called up the doctor,” he replied.

“What did you say, Whliam?”

“Have you got your good ear to the receiver?” he demanded.

“It’s no better than the other one now,” Cousin Emma said.

“I say,” he repeated in a clear low voice, “Elinor has talked with the
doctor.”

“That’s good, is she coming home?”

“If she wants to,” William said.

“Weil, she wants to,” Cousin Emma said.

“Then I suppose she is coming home,” William said.

“That’s good, I’ll write and tell her.”

“Better wait,” William commanded.

“Didn’t you say she could come home if she wants to?” Cousin Emma
demanded. “Well, if she wants to do so I suppose she can, can’t she?”

“Yes,” William said in desperation, “yes, yes, all right, Cousin Emma.
You write to her.”

He was irritated with the nonsense, and he hung up the receiver forcibly
and plunged into the papers on his desk.

Nevertheless his irritation was touched with enough alarm so that he
remembered the conversation when he reached home two days later and
repeated it to Elinor.

“Jessica is coming home,” Elinor said. “Didn’t Herbert tell you?”

“Herbert isn’t speaking to me, I think,” William said. “He was stopped
by a state policeman on the way down and I didn’t exactly defend him.”

“Oh, well,” Elinor said comfortably. “I hope when Jessica gets home
and the child is brought back that they can resume some sort of normal
living.”

They were not prepared, however, for the arrival of Jessica, Herbert
and the child on the next Sunday morning while Bertha was at church.
Bertha had become recently religious and was fetched every Sunday morn-
ing by a neighbor with whom she went to a church whose denomination
she had never been able to remember, but where she found comfort
enough to enable her to live through the week without having to recount
with tears how wicked Jessica was to her old mother and how nobody at
the orphanage really cared for the baby. She and Herbert did not speak,

450

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

but otherwise their relations went on as usual. She made pitiful attempts
to engage his sympathy, but his stubborn determination prevailed in his
steadfastly ignoring her.

William, walking about the lawn with Elinor after breakfast, saw Her-
bert’s new second hand yellow convertible car come dashing up the road,
and swerve into the driveway. He turned his head away, expecting to hear'
it crash against the heavy stone pillars of the entrance. This it escaped,
however, and Herbert brought it to an abrupt stop in a swirl of gravel.
Jessica, it seemed, did not mind speed. She got out of the car holding by the
hand a small exquisite child in a ruffled pink organdy dress and Herbert
descended, smiling and proud. Jessica herself looked actually beautiful,
William saw with profound reluctance. He had a horrible chill of fear.
What if she should renew her false pretensions of a relationship here and
now? She came forward gracefully with her usual modest air.

“Good morning, Mr. Asher, and Mrs. Asher, too. I am so happy to see
you again. It’s so lovely to be home at last. 1 told Herbert this morning that
we must come over the very first thing and thank you for everything. I
know they wouldn’t have let me come home unless you had both insisted.”

The pretty voice was sweeter than ever, deepened with an edge of sad-
ness. Jessica’s face, too, was more delicate, more thoughtful, and her
large blue eyes were remote and gentle.

“Good morning,” William said stiffly. But Elinor saw only the child.

“What a beautiful little girll” she said, and kneeling down upon the
grass, she took the child’s small plump hand. “What is your name, dear?”

“Monica,” the child replied.

“Monica?” Elinor repeated.

“I have always liked that name, Mrs. Asher,” Jessica said, “though I
never knew anybody called it. It came out of a book. It was an English
story, I remember.”

“Come and sit on the terrace,” Elinor said kindly. “I shall find a cookie
for Monica.”

Thus in a moment they were sitting in the terrace chairs, Herbert smiling
and yearning, the sunshine glistening on his fat white face. Elinor disap-
peared and came back with a plate of cookies.

“Take a cookie,” Jessica said almost sternly to Monica.

The child put out her hand and took one carefully by the edge, and
stood holding it between her thumb and forefinger.

William remained silent, wishing that he could escape. He had no small
talk for such an occasion. It was impossible to forget the repulsive scenes
of the past, and yet it was incredible that they had left no mark upon
Jessica except the slight pensiveness which only increased her grace.

“I hope you are home to stay,” Elinor said cordially.

“Oh, yes,” Jessica said with eagerness. “The house seems so nice. Her-
bert has tried to keep it clean. I do want the downstairs papered, a satin
stripe, I think, something like you have, Mrs. Asher, m. the parlors. And I

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

451

think I shall have the sofas covered in velvet, a pale green, perhaps—what
do, you think?”

sounds very nice,” Elinor said with reserve.

*^Of course, if I had not been ill, we would have had the new house
built by now,” Jessica went on, hurrying a trifle more than she had used
to do when she talked, with a slight blurring of the sharp consonants, and
certainly her eyes were not steady. They darted here and there, restlessly,
and suddenly she rose.

you mind if I look over the dear old house, Mrs. Asher?”

®‘Not at all,” Elinor , said.

The child started to follow her but she said sharply, ‘^No, no, Monica,
you mustn’t come—”

‘^She may if she likes,” Elinor said.

**No,” Jessica cried almost passionately.

‘‘Here, baby, stay with Daddy,” Herbert said. The child, an obedient
little thing, orphanage-trained, went and sat on his lap, but she did not
taste the cookie she still held patiently in her right hand, careful not to
soil her dress.

Herbert’s eyes brimmed with tears, ‘T don’t know how to say what I
have to say, Mr. and Mrs. Asher,” he began. The tears spilled and rolled
down his cheeks.

‘Ts something still wrong?” Elinor asked to help him,

“It’s my job,” Herbert said. “I ought to stay at home. I oughtn’t to be
way off, maybe on the road goin’ to New York, and leavin’ her alone at
night. I believe that’s what set her off before, bein’ alone at night, it was
always late before I got home, and maybe not gettin’ home at all some
nights. A chauffeur’s life is not his own, so to speak.”

“Such a pity she won’t have Bertha with her,” Elinor observed.

Herbert wiped his face all over with a clean handkerchief and his voice
hardened. “I see exactly how she feels about the old woman. Jessica is
refined and Bertha is as common as they make ’em. An old German peas-
ant, is what Jessica calls her.”

“Do you know what a peasant is, Herbert?” William asked.

Herbert hesitated.

“Never mind,” William said. “Only they aren’t hateful, as a rule.”

“Whatever Jessica feels for the old woman it can’t be mended now,”
Herbert said obstinately, “She can’t forget.”

“Do you know, Herbert,” Elinor said suddenly, “I don’t believe that
Bertha ever hurt Jessica one bit. Bertha has been with us for forty years
and she has never hurt anybody. I have known her all my life and we
used to tease her terribly when we were children and she never even got
cross. She just used to laugh. She laughed a great deal in those days. Poor
soul, she scarcely laughs at all now.”

“She hurt Jessica,” Herbert said stubbornly.

They did not argue. Elinor spoke to the child persuading her to taste

452

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

her cookie' and William sat silently smoking. Jessica came back after a few
minutes, her eyes bemused. “It’s all the same,” she said softly, “jiist as I
remembered it.”

She looked strangely at' Herbert “I wish you’d go in the kitchen a bit
I want to talk privately to Mr. and Mrs. Asher.”

Herbert got op, bewildered, letting the child slide' to her feet. “What
you got to say that’s private?”

“Go on— go on!” she cried in quick passion, and stamped her foot

He went away then humbly, pathetically so, William thought. Well,
Herbert had tried beating her and now he was going to try love. It was
quite obvious but, he feared, equally hopeless. Was Jessica really well?
He watched her intense pretty face. She had seated herself and now she
drew her chair close to Elinor.

“Dear Mrs. Asher, you both understand, but perhaps you will understand
best. Is there any way that I can get out?”

“Get out?” Elinor repeated.

“Away, away,” Jessica said with soft impatience. “It’s terrible to live in
such a deserted place as the farm. What is the use, Mrs. Asher? The work
is all to be done over again every day. I cannot get to a theater, nor even
to a movie. If we lived in a town at least I could walk up and down the
streets and look in the shop windows. But there is nothing to look at where
we live.”

“Why don’t you ask Herbert to take you into a town?” William asked.
This was ail ridiculous, the idea of having to spend a Sunday morning
upon Jessica!

“He says an apartment of the sort I want costs too much. He says I
would be dissatisfied, we couldn’t have all our furniture.”

“It is your mother’s house, I believe?” William said. “That means you
pay no rent.”

She gave him a strange, cold look, as though she had not understood
what he said.

“Jessica,” Elinor said kindly, “if you could do exactly what you like best,
what would you do?”

The pretty face, so delicately sad, fi'ushed a pale rose. Jessica clasped
her hands. “Oh, I would learn painting— it is what I have always wanted,
to be an artist.”

Elinor considered. She turned to William. “I don’t believe that I ever
told you Jessica does rather nice water colors. She used to paint her own
Christmas cards.”

“It has done me no good,” Jessica said sadly.

He could see that Elinor was moved but he could not at all believe
in Jessica. “If you really want to learn about painting,” he said gruffly,
“some of the finest artists in the country come to Manchester for the sum“
mer. I can easily get you lessons and perhaps for nothing. Why not?”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 453

Her blue eyes flickered away from Ms face. so hopeless, living
where we do.”

William was suddenly angry. “Look here, Jessica, stop' taikkg like that.
You live ill' a countryside where plenty of rich people pay money to live.
Don’t blame the place.”

He feared for a moment that he had said too much. Jessica’s face lit
with anger, she trembled, but only for an instant, and then it was , over.
She restrained whatever impulse she felt, and her head drooped., “Thank
you, Mr. Asher. I believe we ought to be going. Fil just call Herbert,”

She disappeared between the open French windows, her slender figure
so light that she made not the least noise, and they waited. The lovely
child stood looking at them thoughtfully, not afraid, and yet not friendly,
a child who had lived among strangers all its life.

The minutes passed. “What can they be doing?” Elinor inquired. But
she did not go in to see, and after perhaps five or six minutes Herbert
and Jessica came out again.

“Goodbye, Mr. Asher and Mrs. Asher,” Jessica said formally. “It has
been pleasant to see you. Do come and see us when you can.”

“Thank you,” Elinor said, bewildered.

“Gome, Monica,” Jessica said.

Herbert hesitated, and looked as if he must speak. He glanced at Jessica,
walking toward the car. Then he leaned toward William. “She says, don’t
think you can make her take lessons. I don’t know what she means but
that’s what she says.”

William was suddenly outraged. “My God, it was her idea, not mine!”

Herbert looked unbelieving. “She says, sir, don’t think you can make her
do it, that’s all,”

He stalked away and climbed into the car and they whirled off.

“Did you ever hear of such impudence?” William demanded, glancing
at the cloud of dust

Elinor shook her head. “Let’s forget them. They are both incomprehen-
sible. i am glad that Herbert is leaving. Let’s not ever see either of them
again. The poor little cMld!”

She stretched herself upon a long chair and turning her face to the sun
she closed her eyes, William, gazing upon her gradually relaxing face, felt
the impulse to do the same. She had summed up his own conclusions
about the human race, wherever one found its peculiar members. They
were incomprehensible, in these times, at least. Only history made them
seem plain, the classes separate and orderly. Now blessed be the sun shining
down upon him and upon Elinor as they accepted what they could not
understand.

Bertha walked stolidly up the gravel walk and they heard her foot-,
steps and opened their eyes. She was hot and red, and under her toque of
crumpled violets which was her Sunday hat they saw at once that some-
thing had happened. She paused at the step.

‘'Jessica and Herbert komm they here?” she demanded.

“They did, Bertha,” Elinor said pleasantly. “They brought the little girl.”

“I thout it wass so,” Bertha muttered. “I did— I did, andt she dondt
shpeak to me! She just sees me go by.”

She went on around the house and they lay down again and closed their
eyes to the sun, determined to forget.

“Amazing,” William said, without opening his eyes. “Why do we have
to have them? We pay them to do the work and they torture us.”

“We are too easily tortured,” Elinor said, without opening her eyes.
“We ought to be ruthless.”

They could not be ruthless, and that was the trouble. They remained
human, and upon their tender human feelings, which could not believe that
any creature born was purposely cruel or unjust, these ignorant ones trod,
not knowing how they wounded nor caring. In a microcosm here was the
world within the walls of his own house. They wished to live their pleasant
lives, kindly to the suffering but not entangled. It was no longer possible.
William felt an outraged anger sweep through his soul and run like heat
through his body. He got up with an energy sudden and intense, and
Elinor opened her eyes.

“What now?”

“I am going to ffre Bertha,” he said in deliberate calm.

“Oh no,” Elinor cried, “we mustn’t— after forty years, William?”

“It should have been done long ago,” he declared. “They’ve clung to
the family like leeches, sucking the spirit out of us, feeding on our sym-
pathy, justifying themselves by their impudence. I’ll cook the meals.”

“Don’t be silly,” Elinor said,

“Fd rather be silly than go on with this sort of thing.”

She watched him in an awe of horror. She was a Winsten, that he
could understand, and she had grown up under Bertha. Bertha had her big
red hands on every part of the house, it was only Bertha who knew how
many linen sheets there were, how many silver spoons, which were the
heirlooms and which the wedding presents. Bertha who was supposed to be
only the cook was actually the manager, the tyrant, the usurper, and in
addition she fed upon their minds and souls, she took their precious time
to listen to her woes, she clouded their happiness and destroyed their peace,
and they had not had the courage to send her away, because they had been
trained in kindness to those weaker than themselves. Well, he was going to
put an end to it. It was absurd of course to say that he would do the

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

455

cooking but there must be other cooks, and he would send them' away one
after the other instantly if they came out of the kitchen.

He stalked into that room and found Bertha tying a large white apron
abO'Ut her thick waist; Her fuE purple lips were quivering and the tears
were running down her cheeks. She wiped them away with the edge of her
apron.

vant somedings, Mr. Asher?”

“Yes, Bertha. I want you to go home.” He said this in a mild voice that
she took as kindness, his wish that she take a day off.

“I haf no home,” she wailed, her face wrinkled like an old baby’s and
the tears welled again. '

“Then find a home for old women and go to it,” William said in the
same steadfast and dreadful voice.

Bertha stopped crying suddenly, her jaw hanging. “You dondt mean you
fire me,, Mr. Asher I”

“I do,” he said. “I mean it exactly.”

Her tears dried in the instant. She snatched at the strings of her apron.

“I go, I go now!” she shouted in a high shrill scream.

“No,” William said. “I’M drive you to Manchester.”

“No, indeed no, you think I drive mit you? No, I von’t. I call a taxi, I
dondt rite in your verdammt car!” She was suddenly beside herself with
rage. She clenched her fists and shook them in his face. He had expected a
change but this was monstrous. Nevertheless he remained calm, watching
her with curiosity. This was what she really was. Perhaps she had beaten
Jessica. He could believe it now.

“You,” she screamed, ^‘you should neffer think you are a family here!
Yon are nottings— a— a— ” She spat upon the floor she had scrubbed so
many thousands of times. “You a shentlemans! Ha-ha! I tell efferybody
how you are. Efferybody will know you different”

“Nobody will believe you,” William said inexorably. “Get your things
together, Bertha,”

“After forty years, you turn me out so,” she moaned, collapsing on the
wooden chair. “Heinrich allways toldt me, he sayss ofer and ofer, ‘Dey
turn you oudt, Bertha, ten, tventy, tirty, forty years, any day, dey turn you
oudt.” She snapped her fingers.

“Either you must get out or we must get out,” William said gravely.
“Since it is our house I suppose we will stay. You will get proper pay.”

“Fay,” Bertha screamed, “Who pays me back for years I scrub und
vash und cook? Going to bed tired effery night?”

“We have paid,” William said. “You have been paid in money and in
time. You have had a hpme here and three meals and more a day. You
have made your living easily among kind people.”

She listened without comprehension. “I go,” she said, sobbing. “I go
now.”

She climbed the stairs to her room above and he heard her moving

456

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

about His keart was beating with remorse and sympathy ■ and, good : im-
pulse and pain. But keep her here he would not. The house must be swept
clean of them 'all There must be no more Jessica, no more Herbert, no
more Bertha, no more even of the piteous Monica. He could bear no more.
He must get up in the morning knowing that he would see no stupid face,
hear no sullen voice. They would buy machines, many more machines,
and , when the , machines' had done the work they would put the machines
into the closet and close the door and live in the clean and quiet house
where there were no human beings except themselves. The evil and
parasitic life of servants would be cleared away, and they would be free
forever of voices in the house. He telephoned for a taxi and then sat down
on the high kitchen stool, while Bertha pounded to and fro above his head
sobbing loudly and crying out to God in heaven, and he waited. Old family
servants! They were no part of civilization here. The poison or the health
of democracy, put it as one liked, had crept into them ail, and they re-
belled against themselves while they served others more intelligent than
themselves. They could not recognize the truth, that they were doomed by
their own stupidity and by that alone, never to rise above the level of
their birth. He felt that he was on the verge of discovering things important,
though perhaps it was nothing more than the right of those like himself
also to be free. The incubus of the stupid and the weak could become a
tyranny as intolerable as any others, and should it not, like every other
tyranny, be overthrown?

Before he could clarify this discovery Bertha came stumping downstairs
with two suitcases and a huge bundle tied in a sheet.

He rose. ^'Your taxi will soon be here,” he said with the same inexorable
kindness. ^T shall go and write a check that will do you for a couple of
months. Within that time I shall compute carefully exactly what you should
have as a pension. That money will be sent you every month on the first
and the fifteenth, as soon as you send me your address. It will support
you amply and in comfort at any old-aged home of middle range,”

She made no reply, she sniffed back her tears and again he had to
struggle with his impulse to relent. No, he would not relent. To do so
would be to make freedom impossible. He walked from the room with
dignity and went to the library and there wrote a check for five hundred
dollars and blotted it carefully. Then he went back to the kitchen and put
it on the table. “The taxi will soon be here. If you wish, please do come
and speak to Mrs. Asher, She feels very sorry about this, but we have
taken as much as we can.”

“You take?” Bertha repeated in a sudden bellow. “It is me— me— ” she
beat her breast and burst again into angry sobs.

“I am sorry,” he said gently. “I don’t expect you ever to understand,”

He withdrew then silently and went back to the terrace. Elinor was not
there. He went indoors and called but there was no answer. He went up-
stairs to her room and tried to open the door. It was locked.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

,457

/^ElinorP he called.

She opened the door at once and looked at him with a queer abasement.
‘"'I "Suddenly felt afraid of Bertha. Isn’t that absurd? But when you left
me I realized instantly that I’ve always been afraid of her.”

, ‘‘She has never Ill-treated you,” he remonstrated.

“No, never, she wouldn’t have dared. But though I defended her to
Jessica, still I remember I used to feel when I was quite ' small that she
would like to have smacked me, often. I wonder if she didn’t smack the
older: ones? I' .never heard it said. My mother was very strict with the
servants, and then of course when I was married, Bertha was afraid of
you.”

“Was she, indeed?” he murmured. He stood by the window watching
for the taxi. '

“Oh, yes,” Elinor said, listening. She had locked the door again. “She
told me once that you were ‘the knowing sort.’ ”

“Meaning?”

“That you saw more than you told, I suppose. She’s afraid of lawyers,
anyway.”

“Here is the taxi,” he said.

She came to his side and they stood there. Bertha was waiting. She
came around the side of the house lugging the suitcases, and sent the man
for the bundle. They saw her climb into the cab, and then it whirled
around the drive and out the gate.

“She did not once look back,” Elinor said, half sadly. “The forty years
mean nothing to her, I believe. Or perhaps they mean too much. Oh, Wil-
liam, how had you the courage?” They sank on the chaise longue side by
side.

“I don’t know. It does take courage to violate one’s impulse toward
kindness. But I was just angry enough. If one can catch the moment, al-
ways lasting only a few seconds in people like us, when indignant anger
outweighs the habit of careful goodness, one has courage enough for any-
thing. If I had waited five minutes until kindness undid me, I could not
have simply ordered her ofi as I knew I must.”

“Poor Bertha,” Elinor said.

He refused to allow her to be sad. “Not poor Bertha at all. She has
had a good job and a comfortable home for decades, and she will get a
pension for the rest of her life. Lucky Berthal”

Elinor shook her head, not disagreeing, however, he could tell by the
softness and even admiration in her eyes as she gazed at him.

“My darling,” he said, much moved, for how long had it been since she
had so gazed at him? “This is a great day. Put on your hat and we will
go out to dinner. A celebration, my love, is in order.”

He was charmed with her swift obedience. She waved him away, signify-
ing that a hat was far from enough, that she must change and look her
best, and he went into his own room and examined his appearance in the

458

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

mirror and decided upon a change for himself. He took down from its
hanger his best grey suit and clothed himself in it, and chose a blue foulard
tie. He saw with modest pride that he was growing handsomer with the
years, his grey hair becoming his dark skin and there was no trace of
baldness. His father had had a thatch of snow white hair, but he had worn
a beard and Elinor did not like beards, a clipped moustache, very close,
but no more. Had his upper lip been a trifle shorter, Elinor had once
declared, she would have demanded that he shave it.

He presented himself at her door and admired the trimness of her blue
suit “A handsome couple, eh?*’ he suggested.

She smiled a ravishing youthful smile, indicative, he felt, of her inner
rejoicing. Ah, they were going to be happier! He should have rid the house
years ago. Might he not have changed the whole course of life had he
done so? The cloud would not have come between Edwin and Vera; Win-
sten, his elder son, would not have looked at him with the hidden doubt
so often now in his eyes, kept alive, William felt sure, by the unforgetting
silence of Madge. And Susan, ah, Susan might never have married Peter!
He was convinced after long pondering in the magnifying small hours of
many nights, that Susan had not made up her mind quickly, that it had
taken the brutal terrifying moment when the black dog sprang at Pete,
to shock her into deciding for him, a perverse atavistic admiration to
which modern girls were increasingly prone as the traditional shelter fell.
It did not bear thinking of, not now, at any rate. He would take it out
again and again in the night when the darkness hid him and ponder upon
the monstrous damage that had been done to his family. Then, too, he
must reflect upon whether the damage could be mended, and how, their
lives changed, they could be restored.

‘‘Where shall we dine?” Elinor was asking.

"Let us set forth and find a place we never saw before,” he said. "Let’s
be made all new, in honor of fair freedom.”

Arm in arm they fell into step and marched smartly down the stairs.

Six weeks later on a rainy morning in court he was approached by a
clerk who broke in upon his presentation of the witness Arturo Romano,
a bookie.

"Excuse me, sir,” the clerk whispered. “There is an urgent call for
you.”

William waved him away with his black-ribboned pince-nez. “I cannot
be interrupted.”

“Excuse me but somebody’s dead—a member of your family, sir,” the
clerk said.

A member of his family? William appealed to the judge for a brief

VOICES IN THE, HOUSE

459

recess, ..simply repeating .what the man had said, for what else was there
to say, and striding through the astonished and staring crowd, he reached
a telephone in the adjoining room. •

‘‘Mr. Asher— that' you?”

' He could not recognize the hoarse voice, nor even if it were a woman’s
voice or a man’s. ■.

“Yes, it is,” he replied, . .

... “Ifs me— Bertha,”

“Where are you?” he demanded. “What happened?”

“Mr, Asher, sir, Miss Emma—

“I am coming at once.”

Cousin Emma! He flung himself from the room, staying only to tel! the
clerk to report that he would come back when he could. He caught a cab
and ordered the man uptown to the apartment.

Cousin Emma had had a bad heart. She was very old, close actually
to ninety she must have been. Still nothing excused him for not having
been near her for weeks. Elinor had visited her last, actually, and Edwin
had talked of going but probably had not. Perhaps Vera was the one who
had gone most often to visit her, since she and Edwin had moved into the
city to live, so that he need not commute to the office. Edwin was still in
the office, delaying his years at the law school, uncertain, it seemed, as to
what he wanted to do.

But why was Bertha the one to call him, William asked himself, unless
indeed Cousin Emma, with her unfailing kindness, had taken Bertha in?
He paid off the taxi and went into the house. Nobody knew, apparently,
the doorman was calm, the elevator man was indifferent He dreaded the
entrance, but forced himself sternly to the door. It opened and Bertha
stood there, a solid figure in a dingy black suit, her hat awry and her
straight grey hair hanging in wisps about her face, a pasty white.

“I komm here,” she panted. “I chust come here and she is todt—'

He pushed past her down the wide hall to the bedroom. The doors to the
living room and dining room stood open, and in a window a canary sang
its soaring, trilling song.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Im bedt,” Bertha whispered. “She didn’t get up yet. She chust lies—”

He opened the one closed door and saw Cousin Emma. The room was
frightfully close, the shades drawn and the hea\y‘ long curtains pulled over
them. There was some sort of sweet perfume spOled. Everything was in
disorder, silly disorder, not like Cousin Emma who was always neat. She
lay high on two big pillows in a shape of agony, her knees drawn up, her
withered arms bare and distorted, the lace sleeves flung back. Then the
light fell on her open eyes. He saw two bright metallic dots glitter sud-
denly in the very center of her dark pupils. He gave an involuntary groan,
and turning on the bed light he stooped and examined her motionless eyes.
The two glistening points were indeed metal, the ends of what looked like

460

AMERICAN TRIFTyCH

headless nails, or no— knitting needles! Cousin Emma was always knitting.
Someone had thrust deep into each eye a fine thin knitting needle, and
blood and fluid had run down her cheeks in two glutinous streams, scarcely
dry.

He was sick with horror, his tongue curled in his dry mouth, he could
scarcely restrain himself from pulling out the needles, thrust so deep that
he saw instantly they must have penetrated the brain.

^‘Was she like this when you came in?”

**Yes, chust the same,” Bertha whispered. She put her black cotton gloves
to her lips.

‘‘When did you come?” he demanded.

“Chust before I called you, Mr. Asher. I run right avay qvick to tele-
phone. The girl in the office sayss you are in court and she vants to know
vot iss, but I dondt tell it. I sayss I muss myself tell to you. But some mann
in court sayss he muss know, before he vill call. So to him I chust sayss
some vomans in family iss todt/^

No use to feel the heart in that stricken ancient frame, the limbs caught
in their astonished writhing. There was no life here now, so little had there
been before. He turned to the telephone and called Cousin Emma’s doctor,
nevertheless, and then hesitating he called Edwin at the office.

“Edwin?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Come at once to Cousin Emma’s apartment. She has died suddenly.”

Edwin was too well trained to ask a single question. “Fll be there at
:once.” v/'.:: ;

William closed the door and called Bertha into the living room.

“Bertha, listen carefully and answer me. How is it that you are here? I
thought you were in Mount Kisco, in that home.”

“So vass I,” Bertha said.

“Sit down,” William commanded. The canary, impelled by their voices,
set up his quivering silver-edged music. “Why did you come here, Bertha?”
William asked.

Bertha shook her head. Her thick red hands trembled as they clutched
her black gloves.

“You must answer me,” William said. “Otherwise you will be accused
of murder.”

The purple lips trembled. “Mr. Asher, sir, bitte, help me—”

“I can only help if you tell me the absolute truth,” William said sternly.

“Jessica, sir,” Bertha whispered, her sobbing breath drew inward. “She
vass here.”

“Jessica?”

“Ya, she vass—”

“How did you know?”

“She telephoned me she candt shtand Herbert again and so she tells to
Miss Emma and Miss Emma says komm here, and so she is here and she

VOICES ■ IN THE HOUSE

461

says Miss Emma tells me to komm today and she vill to talk mit me. And
I thoiit Miss Emma vants to talk Jessica and me to friendts again, and I
vass happy and" I komm so qvick.”

^Was Jessica here when you came?”

Bertha moaned, “She vass.” ■ ■ .

“And how did this happen?” He glanced toward the closed bedroom
door. '

“Ya—it chust happens,” Bertha moaned. “We fight, Mr. Asher. Jessica
fights me. She opens the door und I am in,.und she stares, so—”

Bertha widened her eyes frightfully and ' glared across the room at
nothing.

“And then?”

“Und dann she shcreams at me how she hates me, und she vill kill me.
I dondt lissen, she didt alvays talk so to me if nobody is mit uns, but I tellt
her, ‘Be qviet, you make soch a noise for Miss Emma.’ So Miss Emma
hears us und she kooms outdt the bedt, and opens the door and tellts to
Jessica, ‘Dondt talk so badt to poor old Bertha.’ ”

Lies or truth? Lies or truth?

“Und Jessica shpeaks sudden so nize,” Bertha went on, sighing in gusts,
“she sayss ‘Miss Emma dear, get back in bedt, your foots are cold,’ and so
she goes in mit, und I vait and I vait so long. Und Jessica comes oudt
and I am making a liddle coffee and she says, ‘I go now to drug store to
get some pills Miss Emma iss needing. You vait, please,* So nize she talks!
So I vait and I vait, und she dondt komm back, und Miss Emma is so
qviet, and so I open the door und I see!”

It was then that he called the nearest police station.

Lies or truth? William examining the fat purplish face could not tell.
Forty years had made a mask of flesh. The doorbell rang and Bertha got
to her feet by habit at the sound and opened it. Edwin was there.

William rose. “Come in, my son. Come into the other room.” He hesi-
tated. Should they leave Bertha, would she try to escape as Jessica had
done? But Bertha had sat down again, a heavy almost sodden figure over-
flowing the straight wooden chair.

“Well be back in a few minutes, Bertha,” he said.

“Dot’s all right, Mr. Asher, I vait,” she said heartily. She folded her
hands, still clutching the black cotton gloves.

William led the way in to the closed bedroom, shielding Edwin, dreading
for him the sudden sight of the contorted figure on the bed. Death was
dreadful for young eyes and yet all must see it sooner or later. He went
directly to the bedside and lit the table light again.

“Do you see her eyes?” This question he put in his normal voice.

Edwin bent to look, his face went white. “Father, how horrible!”

“Jessica was here. But what purpose could there be? That’s what we
must find out.”

“Does she need a purpose if she’s mad?”

462

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

' ■ William 'did not reply to tMs. the other hand,” he. ■ went oa; *Ve
have only Bertha’s word for it that Jessica was here.’* ■

"I can’t ' believe Be,rtha would have the' courage for this,” Edwin, re-
plied. ,He moved away from the bed, out of sight of the twisted old face,
don’t know what Bertha is,” William said. *1: have never told you
how violent she was when I sent her away. And Jessica, you know, has
always maintained that her mother was cruel.”

■ ^'Jessica lies and you know it,” Edwin cried out
' Ah, William thought, then the wound still remained!

*Wou don’t believe what Jessica ■ sa 5 ^s, do you, . Father?” Edwin de-
m,anded.

course not,” William said. He crushed down deep in his mind the
knowledge that anything might be true, anything at all. He had seen strange
sights in his life as a lawyer and he had heard stranger lies than those
Jessica had told even against himself. But Edwin, intuitive beyond either
of his other children, felt the reservation.

You will not grant that absolutely Jessica is a liar,” he said bitterly,
and then came his revelation of the cloud. ‘^Neither whi Vera. She says she
is sure that Jessica lied, but she will not say she truly believes that she did.
I have to live with that.”

‘‘It is very wrong of Vera,” William said. “If I hesitate it is merely
my. lawyer’s training which commits me to permanent doubt, even about
myself.” He decided suddenly to comfort Edwin in the best way that he
could, the most self-sacrificing and the most profound. He felt the blood
mount to his face, slow and red. “As a matter of fact, Winsten told me
that Jessica had made some equally absurd allegations about me.”

Instantly he saw that Winsten, or Madge had told Edwin. His face, still
so young, could not hide the knowledge, his eyelids fluttered slightly, the
look in his eyes grew shy, the very shape of his face changed subtly to sig-
nify that he knew.

William tried to speak lightly. “I suppose you boys talked it all over and
laughed at the fix the old man was in.”

“We did talk about it, sir,” Edwin said manfully. “Madge told Vera
and me one night when we spent the week end there. I told her that if she
ever mentioned the— the matter again I would never speak to her as long as
I lived. I told her I was sure it was all. lies.”

“But you do believe it possible?” William asked quizzically.

The door bell rang loudly again and again before Edwin could answer
and they went out together, William closing the door behind him. Suddenly
he felt exhausted, almost faint. Bertha was opening the door and down
the hall they could see the doctor and with him the police. “Look here,”
William said urgently to Edwin, “I am going to turn this whole dreadful
business over to you. I’ll go home and break things to your mother and
get in touch with Herbert to find Jessica.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE 463 '

, «Very well, Father,” Edwin said with assumed composure. There was
no time now to answer the question of believing. .

. William took up his hat and stick and walked down the hall He shook
hands with the doctor and bent his head slightly to the , two policemen
behind him.

. ''Now that you are here I shall leave my son in charge,” he said gravely, '■
"The deceased is my wife’s second cousin, the servant is an old cook in our
family, recently retired. She will explain for herself how she happened to '
be here. Jf I am wanted my son can reach me. I should go home to be with
my wife. My son is in my own law firm and is well qualified to assist you.”

He nodded' to receive their assent, hurried out of the house, and' tele-
phoned at the drugstore next door for his car.

The journey home was grateful to him, he needed time to consider what
must be done. The new chauffeur, a Vermont farmer’s son enamored of
the city, drove silently and with a certain elan of pleasure in his job. He
was still unmarried, and it was enough to have freed himself from the
farm. His young enthusiasm filled him with zeal and the desire to please.

This, too, would wear away as all else did but it was enjoyable to
William while it lasted and today a blessing.

In the vacuum of time moving through space William’s legal mind
worked quickly and well. He outlined to himself a clear line of action,
step by step, which he intended to write down for Edwin’s benefit, Bertha,
or Jessica, must be defended but the case could not remain with their firm.

His mind played over the roster of the city’s lawyers and he chose one
headed by an old college mate and friend, Barnes, Holt, Mackintosh and
Lane.

When the long hours drew to their end and he saw the roof-lines of his
home black in the early dark and caught the flow of lighted windows
through the trees he felt strong again. He was always strong when he
knew what he ought to do.

Elinor met him at the door when he reached home. It was late but she >
looked so fresh and pleasant that he dreaded to destroy her mood. But it
must be done. They kissed, and he put his arm about her,

"My dear, you must prepare to hear a very distressful thing.”

Her mind flew at once to the children, the tender grandchildren, the
younger ones, as though death always threatened them most nearly. "Is it
the children— ” - ■

"No, not the children. The oldest person in the family instead— Cousin
Emma. My dear, she died very suddenly this morning,”

"Oh no, oh William— all alone?”

"Come into the library, Elinor,”

There, when she had sat down, very simply he told her what he had
found and exactly how he had learned about it

She was appalled, unable to grasp the full evil of what had happened.

It was not death that disturbed her, he could see, for Cousin Emma was so

464

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH

oM, but. It 'was the manner of death, and the monstrous contrast to Cousin
Emma’s unfailing goodness. '

. ' "‘She was so good,” these were the words she kept repeating. '‘I cannot
imagine^' why— when she was so good, especially to Jessica, always to Jes-
sica, She always said that we must be kind to Jessica because she was the
child of the cook and the. butler. She said we must not let Jessica fee! any
difference. I shall never understand it, Cousin Emma, of all people— do you
remember how she thought Jessica should not marry Herbert?”

*We must not be sure that it was Jessica,” he warned her. He rose and
’went to the telephone and called Herbert. The country exchange was slow
and he listened lest one of the maids interpose with some household call,
but at last he heard Herbert’s heavy voice.

“Well?”

‘^Herbert, this is Mr. Asher.”

‘m, hello, Mr. Asher.”

am calling from home, Herbert, to inquire how Jessica is.”

He waited during a long second or two. Then Herbert said, “Jessica’s
pretty good, Mr. Asher.”

“She’s still at home?”

“Yeah, she’s here,” Herbert turned his head and his voice grew distant
but was still clear. “Want to talk to Mr. Asher?” Quite clearly, too, he
heard Jessica’s peevish reply. “What should I want to talk to that old fox
for?”

Herbert’s voice was at the mouthpiece again. “She’s here busy at some-
thing— looks like knitting, I guess.”

“You haven’t moved to a town after all?”

“No, we ain’t goin’ to move.”

William hesitated. How put the question he needed to have answered?
“Someone told me that Jessica was in New York and I wondered if it were
true.”

Herbert’s slow voice repeated the words, “In New York? She ain’t been
In New York* Mow’d she get there? I didn’t take her.”

Herbert’s head turned again. “He says you was in New York, Jessica,
haw haw!”

“Dirty old beast,” Jessica’s voice said sharply. “Tell him to mind his
owm dirty business.”

Herbert’s voice came back again. “Jessica says tell you no she wasn’t in
New York. Guess she would like to be, though, but I ain’t got the time
now with all these chickens on my hands.”

“Do I hear your little girl’s voice?” William asked pleasantly. He had
heard a wail and a slap.

“Yeah, she’s just got into something, I guess.”

“Well, I won’t delay you,” William said and hung up. This was very
bewildering. Was Jessica lying, was Herbert shielding her? “Herbert says
she was not In New York.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

465

, "“‘It doesn’t matter,” Elinor said most sadly. '‘■Poor old Coiisk Emma,
such a true gentlewoman, if that means anything anymore—I don't know!
Only it wasn’t fair for her to die like that— so terribly frightened at the end
—I can’t think of it” She put her hands to her face and hid her eyes,

*‘Don’t think of it,” William said. ‘‘Only remember how much happiness
she got out of being good and kind. She could not have been anything
else, whatever the end. She fulfilled her own nature.”

“And now Jessica has fulfilled hers,” Elinor exclaimed. Her hands
dropped to , her lap.

“Wait,” William reminded her. “We must find out the troth.”

The day of the funeral was such a day as, Cousin Emma herself might
have chosen. Her aged body, distorted by autopsy, was restored again to
decency, washed and clothed, her white hair curled skilfully to cover all
scars. Her eyelids were drawn like shades over the tragedy they concealed,
and she was housed in a handsome casket of mahogany with silvered han-
dles. The family plot was in the Manchester cemetery and the place was
crowded with strangers. Few of Cousin Emma’s friends had survived to
come to her funeral but the dreadful story of her death, flashing through
the newspapers, brought scores of cars speeding from all directions.

The family, standing about the open grave, took no notice of the curious
crowd except that Elinor, glancing about, said in a low and wretched
voice, “How she would have hated this!”

For Cousin Emma did not truly like the common crowd. Scrupulous
and delicate in her approach to every human being, she shrank from the
many, and lived, it must be said, as a recluse for most of her life, thereby
magnifying the value and the meaning of the few persons she knew. But
this was her public end, the newspapers screaming the details, and Bertha
and Jessica both under arrest

It could not be prevented. Herbert had come begging to William.
“You’re a big lawyer, Mr. Asher, you get crooks a trial when everybody
knows they’re guilty. Here’s Jessica locked up when I can swear she was
at home. I’ve had to put the baby in the orphanage again. Bertha ought
to be locked up, she was right there, but Jessica wasn’t. I can swear—”

“The matter is quite out of my hands,” William had said firmly. “It is
not possible for me to handle the case.”

The minister was dropping the clods, crumbling them to earth, and let-
ting them fail. “Dust unto dust—” his intoning voice went on, and a bird
burst into sudden song in the elm tree above his head. What, William won-
dered senselessly, had become of Cousin Emma’s canary? It had been for-
gotten. Winston’s little girl, the third child, began suddenly to cry. She
should not have come, he did not approve of children at funerals but
Madge had insisted that it was a family occasion, death as well as birth,
and that the children ought to know. They were ail there except the baby,
the fourth child, the boy.

On a certain spring morning, years later when the pattern of life had
been pleasant long enough so that William had all but forgotten Jessica,
when the Christmas roses Elinor had planted on Cousin Emma’s grave
were already in bloom, he received a telephone call. It was Saturday morn-
ing and he was at home after a late breakfast.

“Who Is it?” he demanded.

“Ifs me, Mr. Asher.”

“I don’t recognize you.”

“It’s Herbert Morris, Mr. Asher.”

A violent revulsion dashed William’s spirits. Why must he hear this voice
again?

“Good morning, Herbert,” he said with hypocritical calm.

“How are you, Mr. Asher?” Herbert asked.

“Very well, thank you,” William replied and was not deceived. He ex-
pected the next question.

“Mr. Asher, I wonder could you do something for me?” Herbert was
humble indeed.

“I don’t know, I am sure,” William replied.

“Could you and Mrs. Asher 'please go to 'see Jessica, sir, and
you don’t think she’s well enough now to come home?”

William was stunned at the monstrous request. Was Jessica to rise again
from her living grave? Was her voice to be heard again in his house?
“I cannot see that it would do any good whatever, Herbert,” he replied at
Ills stillest.

“You see, Mr., Asher, sir,” Herbert said with all Ms old submissive
stubbornness, “she looks real well, just like she used to. She talks sensible-

466 . AMERICAN TRIPTYCH.,

The funeral was over at last, and local police, parted the crowd for the
family, to wal.k through to their cars. The family went home alone and
ciGsedThemselves into the house and the crowd went away. again,, discussing
.the, guilt. of the cook or the maid, betting upon one or the other, while the
■grave was covered with the displaced earth and then massed' with flowers.
.Not .many people' remained to give Cousin ' Emma flowers, and William,
and Elinor had sent a' blanket of white roses and maiden hair fern which
made a good show. .Edwin’s' and Vera’s pink lilies were at the foot, and
Winsten’s and Madge’s yellow .roses at the head. A few people from the
crowd had thrown down wild flowers, a homegrown, rose, stalks of del-
phisilums, a handful of daisies.

Cousin Emma was of no importance, 'William reflected, merely a woman
who had lived a kindly, good and somewhat lonely life. But that she had
died by violence, that she could be murdered, was significant indeed, and
by such a death she became important.

like, too. She’d like to, come home. She says we ought to be,iin„it€d again.
The child is growing up without a mother, sir.”

^Tt is not' so simple for Jessica just to come home, Herbert,” Williain
said in his gravest voice. ^'You, forget what has happened.”

never believe it was lessica—who did for Miss Emma, sir,” .Herbert
said ^ earnestly. ^Tf it wasn’t Bertha it was some stra.nger crep’ into the
house. Jessica cou,!dn’t do no such thing as that. She can lose her tempe,r and
bite like a kid or sompin like that, but she couldn’t murder nobody. Why,

I always had to kill the chickens for Sunday dinner. She’d run .in, the house
.and shut the door and put her hands to her ears, she’d cover her eyes so she
couldn’t look out the window , and see it floppin’.”'

“That doesn’t change the jury’s verdict,” William said.

“Well, sir, Mr. Asher, you’re a lawyer. You could maybe get the gov- ■
ernor to give a pardon— give her another chanct, like. We could maybe
even get another trial.”

William wavered. His legal mind was touched. He had known prisoners
unjustly accused and imprisoned for years. Bertha’s exoneration and Jes-
sica’s sentence were sound enough, but there were loopholes that no one
had been able to explain. Though he had remained determinedly a specta-
tor, except when called upon as a witness, he remembered clearly the
weak points of the trial.

“And Jessica hates that asylum somethin’ terrible,” Herbert pleaded. “She
says It turns her stummick to see all those old crazy people, when she
ain’t crazy herself. And another thing, Mr. Asher, they work her like any-
thing. Soon as they found out she knew waitress work they put her in the
dining room where all the doctors eat and she has to wait on ’em and she
don’t get no pay for it. ’Course they don’t want to let her go. It’s natural
they don’t. But is it fair?”

The newspapers in recent months had carried stories about mental in-
stitutions, heartrending enough to stir now in William’s memory. It was
possible that in the huge institution where Jessica was sheltered there were
such iniquities, though why, he groaned to himself, need they be his con-
cern, or she, for that matter, a concern he had always unwillingly assumed.

“I will talk to Mrs. Asher,” he said, evasively.

“Thank you, Mr, Asher,” Herbert said with the quick cheerfulness of
the uncomprehending mind. “I sure will appreciate it. You’re kind of a
big man around here, I guess you know, and they might listen to you while
they don’t pay no attention to me at all.”

The morning was spoiled, William thought gloomily. He had no intention
of helping Jessica to get free and yet his wretched sensitive conscience
had been stirred again and he knew of old that he would have no rest
until he satisfied it. He hung up the receiver and. returned to the library
where he had been working, but not to his desk. Instead he sat down in
the deep window seat facing south where the sun poured in, and saw Elinor
in the garden below. He wished he need not tell her of Herbert’s call. She

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

,468

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

looked, calmly kappy down .there in the peony bed,.„,iii her old green serge
suit 'Ohs what a plague could, grow within a man’s contented home! He
recalled, with utmost distaste, the way Bertha had looked at the trial, on
just such a sunny fflornlng as this, too, only the sunlight strained, through
the huge dirty window of the city court room*

■ She had been called to Miss Emma’s apartment, Bertha had declared,
by Jessica, her daughter. The matron of the home, summoned as a witness,
had coniimed . this. Bertha had come downstairs in the morning of the
murder d.r€ssed to go to town. She said she was going to see a relative of
her former employer. She had then taken the bus in front of the home.
The matron, a pale exhausted middle-aged woman of . a faded genteel ap-
pearance, had given the further information that the bus, did not use to
stop so handy but she had got them to do it, so that her old people would
not have to walk in the rain or stand waiting in the cold. ‘‘'They can come
out of the house when they see the bus cornin’ and get in like it was their
own private conveyance,” she said, a mild pride brightening her languor.

On the other hand, Jessica had been so entirely herself that William still
found it difficult at this moment to face certain questions secret in his own
mind. When Jessica had been called upon to rise that day at her trial, she
had done so with an air almost sprightly, and with the graceful light step
he knew so well she had gone to the stand. Obviously, as he still remem-
bered, she made an appealing impression, her grey suit and lace ruffled
blouse, the small grey felt hat on her blonde hair had all the air of a lady,
and one still young. As long as she lived, he supposed, Jessica would
look young. She had held spotless white kid gloves in her right hand and
there was a small pink rose on her lapel. Lifting her head, she had looked
about the room, smiling faintly, and the pallor which was habitual to her
passed into a sudden delicate flush.

‘Ts there any reason,” the attorney asked very gently, “why you should
have disliked Miss Winsten?”

Jessica drew in her breath. “Oh no, sir! On the contrary, she was the
kindest member of the family— to me, at least.”

“You had known her many years?”

“All my life.”

“When is the last time you saw her?”

“I went to see her, sir, after I got out of —one day after I had come
home. I had been ill and had been sent away. Miss Emma helped to bring
me home again when I was quite well, and then I went to see her.”

“How did you get there?”

“I walked to the bus, sir. It’s only about a mile from the house. It goes
straight to Manchester and there I can always get a traia.”

Herbert had started up from his chair and had pot up his hand like a
boy in school but no one heeded him. He sank back, the sweat pouring
down his cheeks.

“Do you usually take the bus?” the lawyer asked.

¥OICES' IN THE HOUSE

469

‘‘Oh yes/^ Jessica said brightly. “I always do, Herbert never' feikes me
anywhere. He’s so busy.”

“Your Honor,’’ Herbert had shouted at this, getting to his feet.

“Sit down!” the Judge thundered. Jessica’s head drooped.

“Did you take the train on the morning when your mother says you
were at Miss Winsten’s apartment?” the lawyer asked Jessica.

She had lifted her head proudly. “I am sure I did not.” ■

“Yet you know, that if what you say is proved true, your mother will
be charged with murder?”

“I am saying 'W^hafs true,” Jessica said with frank composure. Then she
added with a sad smile, “My mother and I have not spoken in years.”

William had stirred and coughed. Now was coming the story of the
childhood beatings, ' the cruelties, all the wicked accusations which ' might
or might not be true—

“My mother,” Jessica said touchingly, “was very cruel to me as a child.
She locked me in the cellar and when I cried she beat me. I could show—
there are still marks on my body of these blows. When I was only seven
years old she sent me to a convent in Canada, and I did not see my father
except once a year, in the summer. I loved my father and he loved me.
Then he died. My mother was cruel to him, too. Miss Emma could never
believe it, no matter what I told her.”

Sitting in the library window seat now, years later, William suddenly
understood that last declaration. He remembered how Jessica’s face had
changed, had hardened as she spoke these words. She had been opening
and shutting the latch of her small handbag nervously and suddenly she
snapped it shut with a perceptible click so that he could hear it even where
he had been seated far to the side. Of course, of course that was why she
had killed poor Cousin Emma! The gentle old lady had sent for her to
plead with her once again, for Bertha’s sake, to be reconciled. Cousin
Emma had never forgiven him for discharging Bertha. He remembered
very well when Elinor told him about that. She had gone to see Cousin
Emma on one of her usual visits, and had told her where Bertha was and
why, and Cousin Emma had been quite distracted about it. She had ex-
claimed over and over again, “But Elinor, my dear, one has an obligation
to an old servant!” ■

“Bertha is very comfortable, Cousin Emma,” Elinor had assured her.

“Oh, but it is the heart that needs comfort,” Cousin Emma replied. “I
shall send for Jessica, I shall certainly talk to her.”

This she had done more than once, William knew, and although he him-
self told her it would be of no use. But Cousin Emma was incorrigibly
softhearted, the more so as she grew older, and so he had not tried to
persuade her. He supposed she must have seen Jessica several times, per-
haps many times. And doubtless on that final morning she must have per-
suaded her too much, she might even have accused Jessica of lying, and at

47i.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

that Jessica’s miad burst from the cage ia which, she tried to keep it im«
prisoEed aad Mdd.ea.

' -'.That day at the trial, when she decla.red her mother cruel people had
: stared at Bertha, but she sat .immobile, gazing across .the room at the tall
.w.iiidows. The jury had leaned forward to listen to Jessica, always sympa-
thetic, 'and the questioning went on, imtil she waS' fims.hed. Then s.he sat
down and put her white lace handkerchief to her lips.

■ Bertha had not .moved. When her name was called s.he had started and
stared about her as though it was for someone else,

■ ‘'Come, come,” the Iaw>^er said, “get into your place.”

■ ..She 'had got to her feet, a thick bewildered figure. She had moved to the
stand and taken her oath in a voice .so low that it could not be heard.
Then clutching ' the wooden rail, she had waited, gazing humbly at the'
judge.

“You have' heard the accusations of your daughter?” the attorney said.

Bertha gave a massive sigh. “Ya, Jessica talks so—” '

“Is It true?”

“I neffer beadt my little childt,” Bertha said somberly. “Sometimes I
slap her a liddle bit venn she runs in the big bans, ya. There she dondt
belong. So muss I teach her, her papa wondt. To beadt— no, neffer!”

She stopped, as though no more could be said.

The questions went on relentlessly. “How did you come to be at Miss
Winsten’s apartment?”

“Jessica calls me. She tellt to me Miss Emma vants I shouldt come.
Miss Emma tellt to me before that sometime when Jessica is home we
muss be friends und I say ‘Ya, gewiss, vy nott?’ So I vish, but Jessica von’t.
Iss may be because she is sick in the headt she dondt vish, I dondt know.”

“Sick in the head?”

“Ya, they sayss so. I dondt know. They take her away and put the
baby in a orphanage. Herbert, he vili tell to you. I dondt know.”

Herbert had been recalled and questioned. Unwillingly he had given
the ugly story of his life with Jessica, her reluctance to grant him his rights,
the final struggle, and trying to conceal all he told everything.

William could not bear the memory. He got up and went out into the
garden to Elinor. She was on her knees by the peony bed the better to see
the pushing young shoots of the peonies.

“They have come through the winter, after all,” she said happily when
she saw him. She had felt much concern for the peonies, always delicate
in the severe Vermont winters, and coaxed through only by the aid of
shelter and manure. He came and stood by her side, contemplating the
thick rose-red shoots.

Then he told her, grumbling after every sentence, “I do not see why,
when things are peaceful, Bertha comfortably senile in Mount Kisco and
Jessica locked up safely, we should again stir up everything.”

She smiled ruefully, “Except that you know we will, and the more we

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

hate to do it, the more well feel we ought. We caul put down the burden.
Well have to go and see for ourselves how Jessica is. Think of the child!
Poor Monica—^^

■They were silent for a few minutes, Elinor on her knees, carefully, with
tender fingers, removing the crusts of winter earth from around the shoots,
while 'William watched. He was remembering again, not really watching,
recalling unwillingly the last time he had seen Jessica. She had been pro-
Bounced insane, and Bertha had been exonerated upon her steadfast and
unshakable story. He stooped to touch Elinor’s shoulder. “Then you think
we had better see Jessica?’^

She sat back on her heels and looked' up at him and he w^as startled
to see, in the heartless light of the morning sun, that fine wrinkles were
now clearly about her eyes and lips.

“Once more,” she said gently. “Then perhaps your conscience will rest.”

He nodded. Ah, she understood him!

The upshot of it was that the next morning, it being Sunday, they de-
cided to make the visit to Jessica instead of going to church, “a good
deed instead of a profession,” William put it wryly.

Tne new chauffeur, as they still called him, was accustomed to them,
and drove them at a safe and quiet rate the thirty miles to the huge mass
of buildings where Doctor Bergstein expected them. William had tele-
phoned the evening before, and the cordial doctor had agreed to be present
when they arrived. He was in his office, a bare small room whose walls
were lined with file cases and text books, a short kindly looking man,
William remembered, whose kindness was nevertheless always cool and
businesslike.

“Come in, Mr. Asher, good morning, Mrs. Asher. Please sit down.”

They sat down, he took his place behind the desk, and put on a pair of
gold spectacles. “I have just been refreshing myself in the case of Jessica
Morris.” He riffled some papers on the desk. “There is really nothing to
report. She was much disturbed when she was placed here three years
ago by court order, as you know. She did not respond well to shock treat-
ment, but we gave her hydropathy with good results. At first she refused
to work but for the last two years she has worked efficiently and well in the
staff dining room and has even taken over the ordering of food supplies.
She spends her leisure, I note, in the occupational therapy room and does
rather nice water colors and some textile designing for the patients. The
occupational therapist reports her intelligent and cooperative.”

William’s spirits sank. “Does this mean that she is well?”

The doctor shrugged his thick shoulders and spread his hands. “Well?
What is well? Here she functions as a well person would. More we do not
know.”

William exchanged looks with Elinor.

“May we see Jessica for ourselves?” Elinor asked.

“Certainly,” the doctor said. “In fact, it is almost time for luncheon.

'472 . AMERICAN TRIPTYCH ,

Why 'Got come to my table and limcli witb us? ' Then you will^ see Jessica
at'',work.’*

■/' . -Ag admirable idea,” WMam said.

A few ■■minutes later they' foUowed Dr. Bergstein down bare endless
corridors to a rectangular dining room set with many small tables. It was a
cheerful room, as it had need to be, William thought. There were lowers'
on the tables, tastefully arranged.

“The lowers are also Jessica’s work,” Dr. Bergstein said. “She has a nice
taste, very sensitive; , Also, obviously, her background has been , among
cultivated people. She reads books, her English is beautiful. Sit down,
please. Let us see' if she recognizes you.”

Ha rubbed his hands with sudden enjoyment, his professional curiosity
aroused by the new situation, ■

“There she is,” Elinor exclaimed.

Jessica stood against the wall among the other waitresses, easily the
most striking among them. Their uniforms were clear blue cotton with
white aprons and small white caps. The color was becoming to Jessica,
her fair hair was loosely curled, cut short now instead of piled in braids
upon her head in the old German fashion. She had lost her extreme thin-
ness, her figure was nicely rounded and yet slender. Her face was alive,
her lips red, her bright blue eyes alert.

“I never saw her look so well,” William said.

“She is well because she is happy,” Dr. Bergstein said. “Yes, here she is
happy. She is busy, she tells some others what they should do, she arranges
the fiowers, she enjoys the library. People like her very much. Sometimes
a man likes her too much and then she comes quickly to tell me so, and I
must speak to him.” He laughed. “Jessica is very moral, very virtuous.
She is always reminding everybody that she is a mairied woman.”

“Does she want her husband to visit her regularly?” Elinor asked quietly.

Dr. Bergstein pursed his fleshy lips. “No, I cannot say so. At first she
would not see him at all. Then because he has a car and takes her for a
drive, with special pemiission, she began to allow this. Sometimes she will
not see him for months. But still,” he laughed again, “she is a married
woman. It is a protection. She will always want protection while she has
her own way. Ah, that is very normal.”

Jessica was lookiog at him and he waved. Suddenly she recognized them.
Her face brightened with smiles, she came with her old graceful swiftness
across the floor, her step as light as ever.

“Oh Mrs. Asher, dear!” she cried sweetly. She seized Elinor’s hand and
held it in both her own. “You have come to see me at last, and Mr. Asher,
too. Oh, I told Herbert only Inst week how I wished I could see your faces
again! You haven’t forgotten me?”

“No, indeed,” William said. “How are you, Jessica?”

“Oh, wonderfully well, thank you, Mr. Asher, only longing to get back
to my own little house and see my darling child, such a tall girl now.

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

473

and sfie needs tier, mother^ I know* How is Mr. Edwin— and Mr* Wiesten
and Miss Susan?”

**Ali well, tliaiik you, Jessica,” Elinor replied.

They were dazed, she had forgotten everything, or had she really? She
was the same warm, young-looking creature, her pretty face pink and white
and uniined, her eyes clear.

“You had better bring some food, Jessica,” Dr. Bergstein said, in good
humor. “We are hungry,”

“Oh, yes,” she exclaimed in her soft eager way. “How shameful of me!
I am forgetting my duty.” She took their order carefully and tripped aw.ay.

“Well,” William said, “well, well, well!”

Dr. Bergstein shrugged again. “You see? Who can say?”

“It' is very confusing,” Elinor said, troubled. “If she is herself again she
should not be here.”

William, could not speak. The prospect of Jessica’s future was insup-
portable, if indeed she was well.

She was back again very soon, and with exquisite service she set before
them the dishes they had chosen,

“I remember how you like lamb chops, Mr. Asher,” she said playfully,
“I had these turned once more for you, knowing you enjoy them well
done.”

“Thank you,” he said.

It was a good meal, simple but well cooked, and William ate it although
he was not hungry, replying now and again to some remark of Dr. Berg-
stein’s. Elinor carried the conversation while he caught fragments of it

iTessica looks quite diiferent from the others,” she was saying.

Dr. Bergstein agreed. “She is different— a very complex case. Very In-
teresting!”

The meal was over at last “Would you like a little while with Jessica
alone?” the doctor asked.

William was about to refuse but Elinor spoke irst. “I think I wouid.”

“Then please come into a sitting room for guests. We have one upstairs
that is quite private. I will send for Jessica to meet you there.”

He led the way and William muttered to Elinor behind his back. “Why
on earth must we see her alone? I’ve had enough.”

“Hush,” Elinor said.

In a sitting room with livid green upholstery and curtains they sat down
and waited in silence. There was much to say to each other, each felt it,
but this was not the time. It was not the end of the visit, no conclusions
could be made. The room smelled of dust and a peculiar acrid reek that
William could not diagnose. He rose and opened a large window, not
easily. It

474

AMERICAN ■ TRIPTYCH

witli white .niiSes at the breast and neck. She looked, as William saw very
Bnwillingly, extremely pretty and she stood hesitating before them, her
unchanging smile still on her face,
down,. Jessica,” Elinor said.

She sat down then on the straight-backed wooden chair, and crossed her
narrow feet, encased in black patent leather shoes. William, who seldom
noticed women’s clothes, noticed these also. It was astonishing that Jessica
could have so maintained herself here.

William said, “Herbert, wanted us to come and see you, and so
we have. Well tell him you are looking very well.”

Jessica dimpled nicely, “Oh, Herbert,” she cried, laughing. “He should
be ashamed, troubling you! I told him so. But he knew I was longing to
see someone from the family.” She turned suddenly wistful. “I suppose Mr.
Edwin is very happy?”

“He is,” Elinor said firmly. “It is a very successful marriage.”

The slight cloud was swept from Jessica’s face as though by an invisible
hand. “And the dear little children, Mr. Winsten’s little children, are they
well? So big now, I suppose, and I wish I could see them.”

“There are five of them now,” Elinor said. “I believe Madge wants six.”

Jessica shuddered. “Oh no, Mrs. Asher, how can she? It’s so dreadful.”

Wmiam stared at her. “What do you mean by that?”

Jessica laughed again and put up her hand to smooth her hair, “Oh, I
don’t know, Mr. Asher, I suppose I shouldn’t say it. I’m always saying things.
Is the house just the same, Mrs. Asher?”

“Quite the same,” Elinor said. “We have two very nice young women
to help us.”

“I wish it were I who was helping you, Mrs. Asher,” Jessica said, wistful
again. “I should so love it.”

“You don’t like it here?” William asked.

Jessica shivered and then suddenly covered her face with her hands.
“No!” she cried in a small sobbing voice. “I hate it— I’m just a prisoner!
They work me— so hard— day and night. I don’t get a penny. It’s just being
—a slave.” ' , . ' ' ... . ..

William gave a great sigh. He sat back in his chair and looked at Elinor
helplessly. Elinor raised her eyebrows. What can be done now, the eye-
brows asked. ■■ *v

Jessica was sobbing softly. “I miss my baby so! Fve hardly been with
her at all-just a few weeks. A chOd needs her mother. I feel her needing
me. But I’m helpless.”

William could not endure more. “Look here, Jessica,” he said with
sudden authority. “If this is the way you truly feel, if you think you can
behave yourself and not torture the life out of everyone, for what reason
I cannot imagine, because ail of us have been kind to you always—”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Asher,” Jessica breathed. She lifted her face, rosy with
weeping. “You don’t need to say that— I never forget anything!”

VOICES IM THE HOUSE

475

“Wellj, then/' William went on, ‘‘if you want to try again to'be a.decent
reasonable woman, I will see what I can do to get parole for yon, at least
that.. If we can prove that yon are w^ell, if you can behav.e yonrseif at,
home, it may be that yon might some day be pardoned.” ■

“Pardoned for what, Mr. Asher?” Jessica asked like a child.

“You told me just now that youiorget nothing,” William said harshly..

“If you mean Miss E.mma, sir, I didn’t do that,” Jessica said in the
same eager soft voice. “I w^as at home with Herbert that very day, all day,
or very nearly. It was the day before that I went to see .Miss E.m.ma, but
that was the day that, he was so awful. He tried to—he was like a beast—he—
oh, I can’t say It! I cannot put it into words! It’s— it’s indecent. Be.fo.re the.
baby, too! I always, slept in the baby’s room, and he came in anyway,
though he had promised—”

He waited, holding his breath, but her fearful sensitive mind felt some-
thing dangerous in the silence. She straightened her back with an effort and
said in her usual voice, “Such things I try, to forget, but kindness I cannot
forget. Miss Emma was the kindest person of ail— to me, that is, and I
loved her. I could not have hurt her. But she never would believe what I
said about my mother. It was true, it was true, but Miss Emma wouldn’t
believe me. Why, even on that last day—”

“What last day?” William demanded.

Jessica’s flush faded instantly, “The last day I ever saw her, the day
before she died—”

He decided on the final test. “Very well, I am glad to know you want
to go home to your husband and child. You seem quite weE. T see no
reason why you should not go home on parole. I will give my own
guarantee that you are well enough and I can, I think, persuade the doctor
to release you on parole after the proper permission has been given.” He
was making a promise impossible to perform, the law could not so easily be
set aside, but it was a test which his instinct told him could be risked. He
met her eyes fully, concentrated upon his, and allowed her a moment to
comprehend what he had said. Then he^jisked the question, “Would you
like to go home at once, today, with us? Herbert would be pleasantly
surprised.”

“William!” Elinor said. Her voice was a low warning. “You are going
too fast,” the voice implied, “you are imposing a shock. Besides, suppose
she accepts, how would you perform?”

“Now?” Jessica echoed In a high tight voice. She sprang up, her whole
body stiffened, even her hair sprang electrically from her head, her eyes
dilated, glittered, stared. She screamed. “Oh, you can’t make me!” And
swinging out her arms as though she were about to fly she ran to the
window.

“William!” Elinor cried.

He leaped from his chair and caught Jessica by the waist. The door
opened and Dr. Bergstein came in, strode across the small room and seized

476

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

lessica’s iailkg arms. ^*Exciise me, I have waited outside. I was afraid of
■sometMag. So, Jessica, you want 'to jump out of the .wiadow this time/*
He pulled down the window with a bang. ‘'We' never open the windows,
Mr. Asher. Now, Jessica, be calm.’* A nurse in a white uniform came in-
stantly at the touch of his hand on the button set in the wall. Jessica began
to cry loudly at the sight of her.

‘‘Jessica,*’ the doctor said. “It is no use. Again, after two years, but it is
stil no use. Take her to the hydropathic room, Miss Baker.”

“Yes, 'Doctor,” the nurse replied.

They heard the dreadful wild sobbing receding down the hal, the fright-
ful screams.

“Is 'She being hurt?” Elinor said anxiously.

“Ho, Mrs. Asher,” the doctor said. “Do not worry. She is not being
hurt. She feels she must scream. We see the other Jessica.”

They sat down shaken and for a moment were silent. Then William
said with a solemn sadness, “Doctor, I have one more question to ask
'you.”

“So many questions I cannot answer,” the doctor said. “I will try this
one more.” He waited, while the sunny afternoon was wasted.

“Could anything have been done to prevent this?” William asked. “Was
some mistake made when she was a child?”

“He means,” Elinor interpreted, “could we in the big house have acted
somehow differently to Jessica when she was small? Jessica was the daughter
of our family cook.”

Dr. Bergstein spread his hands and he gave again the heavy shrug. “Who
knows? It is a question. But Jessica was born the child of the cook, was
she not? She did not wish to remain the cook’s child and so she hates the
cook, who is nevertheless her mother. She wishes to be a child of the big
house, like you, Mrs. Asher, but she is not, and so she hates you. She
does not dare to hurt you, because here Is Mr. Asher to take care of you,
so she hurts a poor old helpless lady, who is also belonging to the big
house. She thinks she is in love with a young man in the big house, so
that he can bring her into the world she wants to belong to, but un-
fortunately the young man does not love her. But Jessica does not really
love anybody, you know. That is her tragedy. And so all your kindness
and goodness— I see you are very kind good people, Mr. and Mrs. Asher—
does her no use, for it makes her only to wish that she too was so kind
and good, and she knows she is not but she does not know why, and she
thinks it is because she is not really one of you, body and soul. She wants
to be born again, Mr. and Mrs. Asher, but it is sad we can only be bom
once. She knows she is a stranger in your house.”

They listened to the stout Jewish doctor, speaking from the depths of
his own unknown life and hidden experience, and his words fell upon them
with the dreadful impact of truth.

¥OICES IN THE HOUSE

477 .

,“We caa never, be rid of the burden of Jessica,” William said ,at last,,
very somberly. .

the, doctor agreed, *‘it. is true. Being what you are, good .people,
you cannot be rid of the burdens. You take them and you keep them—
but, my dear sir,” he leaned forward and put his hand on. William’s knee,
“this is, the hope of humanity! If good people can forget, then indeed
there is no God.”

They rose and the doctor looked at his watch. ,“Oh, heaven, it is four
o’clock nearly. I promised my wife and children— yes, please excuse me.
And, you are quite satisfied now that Jessica must stay here?”

William hesitated and cleared his throat. “But one .more question— do
you think Jessica is really insane, Dr, Bergstein? In the technical sense?”

The doctor gave his shrug and spread his hands once more. “Technical?
What is that? It is a meaningless word to me. Jessica is not always insane,
no, not when she is enjoying her life,” He smiled and glanced about. “Here
is a big house, too, is it not? A very big house, a very big family. She
Is more pretty than most of this family, more clever, she is like a sort of
princess here, therefore when she is thinking such things she is not insane,
not at all. But take her away, put her where she does not wish to be, a big
house where she cannot enter except as the child of the cook, and yes, I
will say she is insane.” He paused and stood, very kindly and solid, fastening
upon them the shrewd, assessing, humorous warmth of his gaze. “We
may say, my friends, that Jessica is suffering from the effects of democracy.
So, if I may say it, are you.”

He bowed, smiled, and went away with surprising nimbieness for so
large a man. .

William stood still for the matter of half a minute, digesting the doctor’s
last words. He perceived their profundity and did not wish to talk about it
“Come, my dear,” he said, turning to Elinor. “Come home. There is noth-*
ing more that we can do for Jessica.”

They went home in silence almost complete, and when they got out
again at their own door, they mounted the steps side by side, somewhat
wearily. The house was quiet enough as they stepped into the door. But
someone’s coat was flung upon the chair by the long oaken table, some-
one’s soft tweed coat and a small round red felt hat with a black pompon
of feather caught at one side,

“Susan!” Elinor exclaimed, crossing the hall, “What does this mean?
Susan!” she called up the stairs.

Upstairs a door opened, and Susan stood there at the bannisters above
them and looked down upon them. Her dark short hair fell on her cheeks,
and her large dark eyes made her face pale.

“Where did you come from?” William demanded.

“Fve come home,” she said.

“Without Peter?”

“Without Peter,” Susan said.

4'7S;' AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Tiieir liearte sank together,' -his and Elinor’s. He could fee! tiie down-
ward plunge in her bosom as clearly as in Ms own.

; “We’ll come up,” Elinor called, her head tilted back to gaze, anxiously' at
the pale face looking down' at them.

■ ■ .“'Fll' come down,” Susan said.

. They hung up thek' wraps soberly, accepting in mutual silence whatever
' was to be. Then diey turned to their daughter, and standing , side by side,
they regarded her. -

They w^ere not prepared for the sudden torrent of Susan’s love, and pity.
She stood before them,' quite self-possessed apparently, looking at them,
one face and the, other, .and then suddenly she spread her arms and em-
braced them both. . ■ ,

*‘Oh, please don’t look like that,” she begged. '“Yo'U make me feel
ashamed. You’re bracing yourselves, I can see it. You needn’t, darlings,
nothing awful has happened. It’s just that I— well, I had to have time to
think and I found I couldn’t think unless I came home quite by myself.
Where have you been?”

She squeezed herself between them, clinging to an arm of each, and in
three they walked toward the east parlor and as three they sat down on
the long sofa.

'We went to see Jessica,” Elinor said.

“Why on earth—” Susan began.

“Herbert thought she might be well,” William broke in. “I am glad we
went to see for ourselves. She will never be well, the doctor made it quite
clear. She can only be well if she stays where she is, protected, successful,
you might say, in her own way. She cannot cope with life as she has
found it. She has neither the strength nor the wit for it, but she does not
know that.”

“What an extraordinary thing,!'” Susan exclaimed. Her ■ eyes, very
thoughtful, did not leave his face. She was thinking, thinking—

“I begin to see the strangest light— a curious twisted sort of light,” she
said slowly, “but coming somehow from Jessica, here in our house, and
shining in the queerest way upon Peter— and me.”

She leaned forward between them and buried her face in her hands, but
she was not weeping. In an instant she threw back her head and got up,
lit a cigarette from the side table and fiung herself in a chair by the fire-
place opposite them.

“Did you ever see Jessica' .here In this room, before the mirror?”' she,
demanded.

“Never,” Elinor said . 10 'surprise.

“I have,” William replied.

“Oh, she was often here,” Susan 'declared, “and all alone. We used to
watch her when we were kids, Edwin and 1. 1 don’t know if Winsten ever
saw her. But Edwin and I used to creep down the stairs and watch her
when she didn’t know. Sometimes we giggled and ran away, and then

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

479

she cried. We were, beasts— all childreE are. Once when she was here ob
vacation I went ..in my room and found. her wearing my best party gown.
Remember that pink tulle? I gave it to her after that, but she was frightened
and wouldn’t take it anyway. She said she’d never have a chance to. wear'
it, except like that, here in the house.”

*Toor thing,” Elinor said, “but all the same it was outrageous.” ■

. She was severe, for she .was more than tired of Jessica. She could not
forget what Dr. Bergstein had sald-“if good people can forget—”

“I do declare,” she went on suddenly turning to William with a sort of'
passion, “I wish that we hadn’t this big house, or any money, or even any
education. I wish, actually, that we were savages of some sort. It’s the ig--
norant and. the uncivilized who really own the world today, 1 do believe,
simply by being a burden to the rest of us.”

**Oh no, they don’t.” It was Susan, speaking in the quietest voice. “Not
at all, Mother! You are quite wrong.” She began to laugh a soft subdued
bitter laughter. “Remember,” she asked, “remember how I married Peter
for shelter, my dears? Remember how I thought him strong because he
killed the black dog?” She added mockingly, “With his bare hands, my
dears?”

A woman, this Susan, his daughter, William saw suddenly with a thrust
of pain at his heart. The child was gone, and gone, too, was the young
girl. She was a woman facing her life and seeing it as something entirely
different from what she had thought it was.

“And what do you think,” she was demanding of them now. “What do
you think my Peter is? Not a rock, if you please, not a shelter, but a
confused rough child, a boy who is so big he has to shave Ms beard by
day but at night he is afraid of the dark. I don’t mean really the dark, not
anything as simple as that, but afraid of knowing what he is, ignorant and
crude and empty inside.” She was smiling, not with mirth but with a fear-
ful sense of the desperate comedy of human life. “Yes, I’ve found that
out now, too. But he comes to me for shelter, if you please. He wants to
leave the garage. He hates the house he grew up in, he wants to come
here, my darlings, where you could never abide to have him. He thinks we
have it easy. That’s what he says. He imagines that we know secrets that
he doesn’t-silly, isn’t it? He thinks that if he knew all we do he would be
powerful— as he thinks we are— and secure, as he is sure we are and as he
isn’t. He insists that he has as much right as we have to know enough to
win, as he puts it”

To this outpouring William listened, astonished and cautious. What was
it, indeed, but that most hateful word, revolution? A light illumined his
comprehending mind. He saw Peter not alone but one of a vast and piteous
company, pushing upward by any means they could into the wider spaces
of a world they imagined was above them. So Jessica had tried to do,
blindly and stupidly, seeing that world only in the shape of his own house,
God help him, from which they had all shut her out, and had to shut her.

480 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Still, tliey migM hme understood, her dreams, so cMMisli and absurd, since
'for ^ber dre,aiiis- sbe lived and now was ai but dead. Beyond ber tragic
sliape„-'lie saw the sbad,owy faces of criminals he had defended and had
heard" condemned, all struggling and contriving and, contending for. that
"upper air.

Dreams! They were ■ the living breath of every human soul and when
they died, the sou! died with them. What if his own dreams had never
come to life? What if there had not been this home and all the love it had
contained, or what if his dreams had exceeded the power of his brain to
make them true? What if he, as Peter put it, had never had Ms chance,
his right to know enough to win? ' '

. The:past remained and Jessica herself was buried there. Yet let the past
do its work, at least for Peter’s sake. How could he , explain to these two
women whom he loved, who waited for him to tell them what to do? He
, chose to speak to Susan.

‘Won should be proud, my dear. You have done something wonderful
,for Peter, by loving him and marrying him. He is awakened. ■ Of course
he belongs to the family. We are all with you— and him.”

He turned to Elinor. “We must get behind this boy, my dear. All that
business with Jessica— it mustn’t happen again, not in this house!”

He was not sure from the look on her face whether she understood,
perhaps not altogether, not yet—

But Susan, who never wept, began suddenly to sob. “I know what you
mean!” She roiled her handkerchief into a ball and stabbed at her eyes.
“I didn’t think you could. Oh Dad, thank you!”

He was distressed by her tears and then embarrassed, and he hid himself
behind his usual dignity. “Don’t cry, Susan. The fact is, I don’t doubt I
shall enjoy knowing Peter better.”

His daughter wiped her eyes at this, she gazed at him with a tenderness
he had never seen before, and then inexplicably she laughed, softly, richly.

“I wonder if you realize,” she said irrelevantly, “how absolutely pre-
cious 3^ou are!”

There could be no such thing as a happy ending to a lot of trouble.
That, of course, he was too old and seasoned to expect. But the way was
clear and he cleared it himself finally by a midnight talk with Elinor. She
came Into his bed that night as though she were lonely, and suddenly she
said, as though she had been thinking about it for hours,

“I love you, William, but I don’t really see how we can undertake Peter!
He can’t be changed now. It’s too late. The differences are too deep.”

He slipped his right arm about her with accustomed ease, and drew her
head to his breast.

“I don’t think we should try to change Peter,” he said. “That would be a
mistake, and, as you say, impossible. I propose simply that as a family we
open the house to him.”

VOICES IN THE HOUSE

481

caii,*t imagine Madge—

Tbe name of Madge recalled Ms mind to a slowly forming purpose.

**Darlii2g,'' he, said above her head on his breast, ''this is a good time
to tel you that I have for the past few years been uncomfortable with
Madge because she half believed some absurd things that Jessica said about
me.”

"About you?” Elinor lifted her head, and looked at him, in the dimness
of the night light.

"Jessica once told Madge and Winstea that I had made love to her.” He
found the greatest difficulty putting this nonsense into words, not because
he any, more feared Elinor, • indeed, tonight he feared nothing at all, but
because his taste, trained to ,fastidiousness by generations behind' him,
shrank in disgust. Therefore he spoke the words baldly and quickly, denying
himself the familiar luxury of silence.

"How absurd,” Elinor said, "and why didn’t you tell me long ago? It
explains— Madge has been so strange with me sometimes, almost as though
she felt Sony for me.” She sat up. "it makes me angry, rather!”

"At me?” he asked quietly.

"No, of course not! What do you think?”

"You’ve said some things to me, you know,” he reminded her.

She crept down beside him again. "I know— I can’t understand why.
There was something wrong in the house.”

"Voices,” he acknowledged and he stretched his arm about her again.
Yes, there had been strange voices, disturbing, corrupting, cutting across
the human grain of their common life. Yet Jessica herself had only been
some sort of instrument, possessed, people would once have said by a devil,
and yet there was no devil in Jessica, no devil perhaps anywhere, except
the reverse energy of dreams denied.

"Anyway, you know me now,” he said reasonably to Elinor. "You can
help to bring ' Madge back into the family, and Winsten will come back
with, her.”

Elinor opened her eyes. "Wmsten never believed you had—”

"Not quite,” he agreed, "but somehow as Vera believed Jessica about
Edwin, aH the time thinking she didn’t.”

■ "Now, William, Vera didn’t-”

"Not quite, but enough to make Edwin feel that perhaps she did.”

He felt something wet upon his bare breast. Elinor’s tears! He rubbed
. .her .cheek gently with his left palm.

"Now, now,” he said, comforting.

; "I. hope . I can keep from hating Jessica,” Elinor murmured.

"You can’t hate .her,” he replied.; "It doesn’t do any good. That’s why
I want to, get the fa.mily here under one roof so we can all understand
things together.”

"Jessica has been a dreadful burden,” Elinor Insisted.
:;;^.:He:^'''Considered,''''.,remembering, the 'moment', when suddenly in the east

482

AMEIUCAN TRIPTYCH

parlor, today he had felt the illuminatioii 'of Ms soul. Such light could not
last,., of course. .But he could remember it and he could live in the under-
standing light of memory.

; ,;^*Welh yes/’ he agreed. ‘^Jessica has been a burden. But then we kept
trying to bear it as a burden. This was the mistake. We . didn’t just— -let her
.into the house.”

^'How could we?” Elinor demanded. *'She was a servant—”

.. ■ He 'W.mced and interrupted her. “Hush, don’t say that word, my darling.
She just ha.ppen,ed to be born Bertha’s child. Anyway, it’s Peter we must
think of, now. There’s still time for Peter.”

And he braced hiniseif for whatever that might mean.

ONE

Edward Haslatt was a young mao both intelligent and cautious. When
he had risen from his bed one fine morning he had not committed himself
to a proposal of marriage. That it was possible he admitted. If the day were
fair, if he found himself in a happy mood, if Margaret were kind, if they
found exactly the spot he wanted for their picnic, then it might very well
be that he would ask her to marry him.

He had determined that unless all these details were auspicious, he
would wait. He had learned his lesson, he hoped. If she refused him again
today it would be for the third time, and he would cease to think of her.
That is, he hoped he could cease to think of her. While he dressed himself
carefully, with an eye to the wave in his brown hair, and to the color of his
tie, which was blue in contrast to his quiet brown eyes, he meditated on Ms
tendency to faithfulness which amounted to stubbornness. Without this
trait, he would certainly not have humiliated himself to ask a girl twice to
marry him, to have suffered her refusals, and now to contemplate further
humiliation.

Prudence and pride combined had often led him to wish that he could
stop thinking about Margaret Seaton. His mother had frequently reminded
him that she was not the only girl in the world and not even perhaps the
prettiest, but such words did not penetrate Ms heart. There Margaret re-
mained alone, and he had only to consult Ms heart to remember her in all
the detail of her curly black hair, sea-blue eyes, fringed with long black
lashes, and her somewhat wide and too mobile mouth. Her profile was to
him one of utter beauty. Her forehead was square and smooth, neither Mgh ;
nor low, and without the slight bulge he disliked so much In his own. Be-
tween her black brows her nose was low bridged and straight and delicate
until the end where it tilted slightly, merely enough to, make her upper lip
short. He tried to persuade himself that her face had nothing to do with'
Ms loving her so painfully, but he knew that without this face, w^hich: iii :
every detail was what he liked best in a woman, he would not have found '

AMEMCAH- TRIPTYCH

'her so inescapable. Without this face, certainly he would not have contem-
plated asking her for the third time to marry: him.

' For now, looking out of the window, he knew that there was no excuse
to. be' found in :the day. The mists were rolling softly .from the round New
England Mils, and by midmorning even the valleys would, he bright. The
small clear river was still clouded, but by its own low fog. Once the sun
fell upon it this too would be dispelled. The town of Chedbury was north-
west of the city of Boston. It lay upon a sloping flank of Granite Mountain,
its houses encircling a central green. At the highest point of this green stood
the large and ancient church of white-painted wood. Its steeple was noble
in design and Its roof was high shouldered, as though winged. Chedbury
was proud of its church, and its design, pure and spacious, had made it
impossible for other denominations to compete among the townsfolk. So
wholly did the church dominate that even the town hall, built a hundred
years later, dared not stand beside it. Chedbury’s town meeting of that
date had built the ball behind the church, and had put the firehouse beside
it. From down the hiii neither could be seen, and on a Sunday, when
most of Chedbury sat in the walnut pews of the church, the people felt
comfortably that it had been wise of their ancestors to have the fire engines
handy in case some secret blaze threatened their prize possession.

Around the green were some twenty houses, a small clean hotel, Mather
and Haslatt’s Printing Shop, a grocery store, and the post office. Among the
twenty houses the Seaton house was the largest, a square compact house,
double winged, white shingled with green blinds. Upon the roof was a
captain’s walk, encircled by a white wooden balustrade, and the same solid
balustrade enclosed the porches, both upstairs and down. Margaret, if she
were at this moment looking out of the east window of her room, could see
the same street upon which Edward gazed from his own window in the
small but intensely neat house which was his home. The street looked
washed and clean. He and Margaret had grown up on this street, aH but
neighbors, and he had fallen in love with her in high school. But he had
been far from the most handsome or the most brilliant in their class, and
she had snubbed him in favor of Harold Ames until their senior year,
when, to his family’s astonishment and his own, he had suddenly begun to
grow tail. This drew Margaret’s attention to him, and since Harold had
been a year ahead and away at college, he had begun to go with Margaret.
But he had not been rash enough to speak of love then, although he was
already beginning to fear that he was doomed to love her. His own pru-
dence protected him, and after their graduation he contented himself with
asking her to write to him when they separated, he to go to Harvard and
she to Vassar, and with seeing her, whenever she was willing, during sub-
sequent summers and winters. This was not enough, for during two sum-
mers she was away, one on the Continent, and the other In England, where
some of the ancestral Seatons stiH lived. Her father, Thomas Seaton, was

■■ THE, LONG LOVE 487

a .Tory, of .BritMi, water, in spite of the fact that the first Seato,ia had .fought
against the English regulars .near Chedbury in 1775V

The Hasiatts were English too:,. but not obtrusively so. Mark Haslatt,. Ed-
ward*s father, was not quite so well placed as Thomas Seaton. The Hasiatt
family had come to Chedbury a scant fi.fty years ago, whereas Seatons had
always lived here, and as .far as anyone knew always in the same old red
brick house, to which Thomas Seaton had added the two wings when .Ms
children were bo,rii. The Hasiatts had moved from one house to another,
as their fortunes Improved. Edward did not know the full history of his
father, for his mother kept ,lt wrapped in vague.ness. He knew that at one
time his father had even been a sheepherder on a Western ranch, and that
.Ms mother, the daughter of a homesick New .England family, had brought.
,hi,m back to Chedbury. The first years had been despe,rate ones—that ■ Ed-
ward knew, for he could remember them. He had still, in the sore re-
cesses of his early childhood, the memory of ugly houses, poor furniture, a
perpetual smell of laundry wMch grew acute on Monday mornings, when
his father rose early to help Ms mother with the family wash. There was
another period when his father was a conductor on the winding little trolley
line between Chedbury and Deerbourne, and still another when he was
trying to learn to be a contractor, apprenticed to his more successful
brother, Henry Baynes. But this, too, had failed. Not until his father found
himself in the printers* firm of Loomis and Mather did ease begin to come
to the troubled family. There somehow Mark Hasiatt fitted, and with secu-
rity Ms confidence rose until at last he became a partner. When Loomis, the
senior partner, died, the firm became Mather and Hasiatt.

By the time Edward was ten years old and his younger brother Baynes
was five they were comfortable in this twelve-room house. The wMte
paint, the green blinds, the neat lawn under the elms, his own room in the
third story, high enough to look out over the hills, became the setting of
his boyhood. His sister Louise knew no other home. But because he could
remember the other transient houses, their misery and their smell, he never
quite forgot that tMs home was luxury.

Not that everything had been happy even here. Edward had a deep
pride which forced him to frequent suffering. His common sense told him
that such suffering was often self-inflicted and unnecessary, and this in
turn made him ashamed to speak of it to anyone, and again in turn doubled
MS ' suffering. But so it was,; and he co.uld do nothing about it He told
Mmself that if Margaret were ever to marry Mm and he could be in his
own. home, free from his mother and her moods and angers, and his father
and his .efforts to placate and soothe, he could be happy. But he was not
sure. He was a' creature compound of both parents, and he knew it He
feared sometimes in Ms darker hours that.it was quite possible Ms moodi-
ness would be too much even for Ms own marriage.

Nevertheless he refused to face this as knowledge. He steadfastly tried
to convince himself that Ms ups ..and, downs were the result of external cir-

488 '

AMERICAN ■ TRIPTYCH

cumstaiaces' mi Ms need to get-away from' a liome.tliat.tie had outgrown.
Whether his 'brother and sister felt as he did, he did not know. They were
outwardly friendly with him, but they shared' nO' conidences. His parents
were determined to send both of the boys, to college, and Edward had not
the heart to tell his father that no college could possibly provide all that
was expected "Of it. As the eldest, he had been graduated from Harvard
'this spring with sufficient honor,. and Baynes, now. at prep school, was to
enter in due time. Louise was still in grade school She' was a thin tali girl
with nothing remarkable in her face, unless it was her extreme blondness.
It was still not decided whether she was to go to college.

Mark Haslatt, so eager for his sons, was dubious about the education of
women, and Mrs. Haslatt, who had married at seventeen, had finished only
the grade school in the little Kansas town where her father had been the
general storekeeper. Edward, in his own pride, had tried recently to rouse
ambition in Louise but she had only listened, her pale eyes wary.

‘‘Don’t you want to go to college, Louise?” Edward had inquired with
: sternness.

Louise saw that she was forced to answer. “I don’t care if I do,” she
said in cautious assent. Then immediately she added with more courage,
■ “And I don’t care if I don’t.”

; It was a family not unhappy, one tied together with deep and unspoken

I loyalties, but never quite cheerful Fear of life, memory of hard times,

I dread of small slights in the community and the casual forgetfulness of

I friends, all combined to keep the household temperature low.

i For this reason the high and constant gaiety of the Seaton family seemed

I to Edward fascinating, if not altogether admirable. Self-assured, domi-

^ neering, careless, old Thomas Seaton loved and quarreled with Ms hand-

some, white-haired wife. There was no caution in their tongues, and Ed-
ward enjoyed and yet was alarmed by the sharpness of their judgments,
the edge of their wit. Without wit himself, he hoped that he might develop
it were he in the clear brisk atmosphere that surrounded the Seatons. With
them he was quite another man. Quiet and prudent, he was nevertheless
courteous and agreeable, and he held his own well enough. He was not
cowed by the Seatons, not even by old Thomas. Margaret’s first admiring
word had come as a consequence. “I must say, Ned, that you do hold up
your end very well with Father. He’s used to pertness from Sandra and me,
and to tempers from Tom, but you’re so— impervious. He’s not used to
that”

Edward had smiled, without betraying the fact that he had smarted un-
der Thomas Seaton’s thrust. “A printer, eh? Newspaper?”

“No, sir— books,” Edward had answered sturdily,

“You can’t get rich on that,” Thomas said.

“Getting rich is not my ambition,” Edward had replied.

“Fla!” Thomas had snorted. He was a big thick man, white haired and
wMte bearded, and he wore tweed suits in a day when most gentlemen

THE LON0 XOVE

489

wore Mack, broadcloth. But that was his English squire . affectatioo,. Cfaed-
biiry thought., Edward had quivered under the portentous grunt, but ll was
true that he was not actually afraid of anyone. Doggedly he had, overcome
ln'hiiii,self the fears of Ms family.

‘‘Edward!” Louise’s voice now floated up the stairs. “Mama wants to
know if you’re ready for breakfast!”

“Coiii,ing!” he shouted. He turned from the window, gave himself a .final
stare in the mirror and ran downstairs almost content with his appearance.
He had no vanity about his angular face, believing himself far from hand-
some. But he took some pride in his height and in his good ,figu.re, square
s.hou!dered and lean,. There were ■ other men worse off than he, was the
way he summed himself up. ,

Entering' the solid comfortable dining room be felt Ills spirits rise. It
was long before the day of antiques and the furniture was of heavy walnut,
expensive but serviceable. One of the fl.rst things his mother had wanted
when money' began to accumulate in the bank was a good dining-room set.
The long mirror on the buffet met his eyes as he entered and presen'ted
him with a double vision of the loaded breakfast table, his family seated
about, and himself at the door. Only Baynes was not there and it was of
Baynes that his mother spoke.

“Come in, Edward. Fm telling your father that I thought you cost him
a pretty penny at college but Baynes is going to spare no expense, I see
by the bills weTe getting already. Your father has only just got up the
courage to tell me.”

“I thought you seemed tired last night, Mary,” his father said mildly.
His gray mustache was colored with egg yolk.

“So I was,” she retorted, “and Fm tired again now. Do wipe the egg off
yourself!” She looked at her husband while he wiped his mouth and then
she turned to Edward. “Sit down, son. Do you want me to put up some lunch
or will Margaret take the food?”

He sat down and resolutely, although self-consciously, did not bow his
head in silent grace. His father’s mumbled “blessing” over these meals had
begun to seem provincial. Yet it took some strength to begin to eat, without
even the gesture. He avoided Ms mother’s eyes, lest catching his she be
emboldened to reprove him again for his godlessness. This made him feel
partially a coward but he was prudent. He poured heavy cream and much
sugar on the bowl of oatmeal that was waiting at his place. “Don’t bother,
Mother,” he said. “Fll buy something at the store.”

“Nonsense,” she said incisively. “Store food!”

“Then some of that chocolate cake,” he suggested. He was not at all
sure of Margaret’s efforts but he would not have revealed this to his family.

His mother looked doubtful. “Fll make some sandwiches, too, out of that
chicken we had last night,” she said. “Then you’ll be on the safe side.”

“Safe side of what?” his father inquired dryly.

Edward smiled and his mother laughed, she laughed they all

490 ,

AMERieAM- TEIPTYCH'

forga¥e tier, ''"Safe side of anytlaiog!” she said briskly. *‘Waat more coffee,
Mark?”

, , Ms father said, "I’ve got to get down to the shop.”

"Don’t act like yon were sorry to go,”^ his mother rejoined. "You know
that .the day when you have to quit shop will be the sorriest day of your
life.”

"Oh, Mama,” Louise cried in distress. "Why do you?”

Her mother had , risen and was at ' the kitchen door, but she paused.
"Why do I what, miss?” she asked.

"Nothing, nothing,” her husband said peaceably. He folded his napkin,
stared at the swinging door through which she passed, and. then, looked
at his watch.

"Know what Fm going to do the day I retire?” he asked' Louise.

"What, Papa?” she asked with mild interest.

"Fm going to catch the first train west and see where I used to live and
maybe stay there,” he said.

"Oh, Papa!” she wailed.

"You’ii never retire,” Edward said comfortably. He was eating buttered
muffin with zest and appetite, and since the egg and bacon were exactly
as he liked, he added them heartily to the foundation of oatmeal already
consumed. He supposed he had stopped growing, but his hunger was huge.

At this moment the telephone rang in the hall, and startled them all. It
was a new instrument in the house, and the bell rang harshly and always
unexpectedly. Edward hastened out of the room, picked up the heavy
receiver and listened to a series of whirrs and rumbles. Out of these came
at last Margaret’s voice, fresh and impatient. "Is that you, Ned?” she
demanded.

"Yes, it is!” he shouted.

"Don’t bellow, Ned! It takes off my ear,” she called back. "Ned, can
you hear me?”

"Yes, I can,” he replied in a lower tone.

"You sound so odd,” she complained, "as though you were shy.”

"Fm not,” he said briefly.

"Ned!” she called again.

"Yes?”

"Ned, will you be very disappointed if we put off the picnic?”

His heart fell into the pit of his stomach. Then he grew so angry that
he was speechless.

"Ned, did you hear?” she cried.

"Yes, I do hear!” he cried back. "And I' shal' be very disappointed,
Margaret”

There was silence for an instant. Then her voice came back as vigorous

as ever.

"It’s only that Father has suddenly decided to go to New York and
wants me to go with him.”

THE LONG LOVE 491

^Twe been, counting 0:n th.is' day ever since you, came borne, wli,icli is
three weeks a,iid ,mo,re,’’ he replied.

Ned!’’ she cried with new impatience. You’re always here a,nd so
am I— as if, there m^ere.n’t miilions of days!’’

“We may not get such another fine day,” he said. Then he went on
.grimly. “If you do.n’t want to come, then I don’t want you to come, hut
let’s not plan another day, Margaret. Let’s just say there won’t be a plcn,ic—
ever aga.in!”

His mother came to the door of the .ha.Ii, a spoon .in her hand, and he
saw her' make fierce faces at him.

, “Edward Haslattl” she hissed. “If you take this—” .

He waved her away,, trying to hear Ma.rgaret.

“Oh, dear, I knew you’d: .feel that way,” she co.mplained..

“Of course I do,” .he said stubbornly, ■

“Ned, if I come, will you promise to behave?”

“Depends on what you mean by that,” he said.

He wished his mother would go away, so that he could speak freely.
But the telephone was never considered private. His father stood waiting
at the front door, and Louise was now in the hail.

“You know what I mean,” Margaret insisted.

“I do not,” he retorted.

“Edward, you’re so— indomitable!” she complained.

“Maybe I am,” he agreed.

There was a silence so long that he wondered if she had hung up. Then
she said In a resigned voice, “Very well. Do you like ham or beef sand-
wiches?”

“Mother is putting up some chicken,” he said. “Don’t you bother.”

“Oh, good,” Margaret said, without gratitude in her voice. “Then III
only bring apple pie, shall I?”

“That’ll he all right,” he said shortly. “I’ll come by for you in half an
hour.”

He hong up the receiver and faced his family. “It’s ail right,” he said
shortly.

“Shall I make the sandwiches?” Ms mother asked.

“Yes, please. Mother, ” ■ Edward said..

His father kissed his mother and went Ms way and Louise began to clear
the table and Ms mother returned to the kitchen. He himself went upstairs
and to his own room. He felt shaken, and he did not want his mother to see
it. The mild hopefulness with which he had begun the morning was now
entirely gone. He committed himself to pessimism. Margaret did not love
Mm and would never love him. He wished that he had had the sense to
abandon the picnic. Then Ms deep unalterable stubbornness rose in him.
No, he would go, he would do everything exactly as he had planned. He
would ask her to marry him and when she refused he would tell her that
he would never ask her again.

492

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Wliea he came dowastairs with his hard straw hat aader Ms arm, his
aagular youEg face was so stera that Ms mother said act a word when she
handed him the neatly wrapped -box into which she had packed his lunch.
He took It and had already reached the door, when he heard her speak.

"He paused.

“Whafd you say, Mother?”

Her gray eyes were profoundly tender. “I said, God bless you, my son,”
she repeated.

He blushed with surprise. "'Thank you, Mother,” he muttered and was
gone.

He had hired a horse and buggy, and from the high seat of the vehicle
he saw Margaret waiting for him on the porch of the Seaton house. Any
other girl in Chedbury would have waited for him inside the house, and
any other girl would have worn hat and coat and possibly gloves. But
Margaret sat on the top step, leaning her bare dark head dreamily against
the wMte painted post. She had a paper parcel beside her, undoubtedly
the pie, and she wore her old gray tweed suit, the skirt of which he privately
considered too short. It was at least six inches above her ankles. She knew
how he felt about it, for her too discerning eye had caught his disapproval
one rainy day when they had met accidentally on the street.

“What’s the matter?” she had demanded. “Do I have a smudge on my
face?”

When she had wormed out of Mm why he had averted Ms eyes, she had
laughed at him. “I tore the edge of my skirt on a barbed wire fence,” she
said frankly, “and so I had to shorten it all around. Don’t be silly, Ned.”
He had retired into silence and they had parted.

Now as he drew near he felt that had she really cared about him, she
would have put on something else. “For two cents I wouldn’t ask her to
marry me,” he thought gloomily, but he knew he would.

She looked up alertly when he reached the gate.

“Slowpoke!” she called. “Fve been waiting ages.” She jumped up with
the lightness that was so pleasant to see, and walked quickly down the
path. He knew that at the windows along the streets curtains were drawn
back to see them go off, but she would not care.

“It took me considerable time to figure out whether you were coming
or not,” he said. He made preparations to get out of the buggy, but she
swung herself up beside him,

“I see you’ve got the new horse,” she said, paying no heed to his last
remark.

“I told Jim I didn’t want the balky one,” he rejoined. Everyone in Ched-
bury knew Jim Smiley’s horses intimately.

They rode in silence for some time. He was still too ruffled to make
talk, and Ms heart was very low. In spite of the old suit Margaret was
looking beautiful. She had put on a blue linen blouse, and he was startled

THE LONG LOVE

493

to see that it was collarless. It was almost as strange as if she were decol-
lete. She caught him looking at her neck,

“If there is anything I hate it is having to wear a high' collar on a picnic,”
she' instantly declared. “It’s an old blouse and I cut the collar off,”
“Looks nice,”' he said with reserve.

“I don’t. really care how It looks,” she sa'id.

They were silent again .for a while. Then being young, she but twenty-
one and' he twenty-two, 'the magic of the day stole into their Mood.
Though they li'ved to be a hundred, there could not be enough o,f such
days. The mists were gone, and the sun shone down on the changeful
autumn colors of the trees. The street of Chedbury, lined with old elms,
Its white houses set back in, green lawns, became soon a country road be-
tween .low stone wails, and then a wide upward trail into a brillian'tiy
shadowed wood, beside a dear brook.

Edward’s mind busied ■ itself with the question of w.hen he should .make
his proposal of marriage. If he kept it unspoken upon his mind, he could
not enjoy his food. On the other hand, he would have no appetite whatever
once ail hope was gone. He was disgusted with himself to discover that he
was so foolish as still to harbor hope in his heart When she had shown Mm
so plainly this morning!

The trail reached a sudden parting in the trees, and they looked down
the beautiful hillside upon which Chedbury lay, now the very picture of a
village, the houses glinting white in the sun and the spire of the church
lifting itself slender and tall above the surrounding trees. This, he decided
suddenly, would be the place, let come what may. He drew up the horse
and jumped down.

“Let’s stop here, Margaret,” he said.

She laughed. “Don’t be so grim-unless you are going to murder me,
Ned. Heavens!”

But she leaped down in one of her long graceful motions and stood only
a little less tall than he, waiting. Her bright blue eyes were knowing and
confident, and while he felt all Ms love rush out toward her it occurred
to Mm that some small amount of shyness in her might have been more
naturaL There was nothing about her that was like, other'' women, and
this was why he loved her so desperately and yet with foreboding. Life
with Margaret could not be peaceful, whatever else it was. He did not
deceive himself. Had there been any way to save himself, he might have
done so, but there was no way. If she would' not have him, he supposed
In common sense that 'some day he would marry someone , else, ' hut he
could not .imagine .it

“Sit down on that log, Margaret,” he commanded her.

She sat down obediently, and he stood and looked down at her and
saw what he expected— that her eyes were Ml of laughter.

“Put the wMp down, Ned,” she said gaily. “Suppose old Miss Townsend
iS''Usmg'Ler'T0lescppel” .

494

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

. He ■ turned abmptly without answering, tied the horse, : and threw the
whip' into the buggy. Then he. sat down on the log. Sitting thus, they were
below the level of the treetops on the hill and therefore invisibie. At this
hour of a. weekday it was not likely that anyone would be on the mountain.

“Margaret/' he began firmly, “let’s have it out once and for all/'

Her hands flew to her face.. “Oh, dear!" she said from behind them.
“Before lunch?”

“Here and now,” he said in the same stubborn voice, “It’ll be for the
last time, .1 promise.” ■

. “No, Ned, don’t promise!” This little voice, coming from, behind her
hands, threw him ofl entirely.

“Eh?” he exclaimed. “Why, Margaret!” Mad hope surged up In Mm.
“You don’t, mean—”

She shook her head, her bands still against her eyes. “I don’t mean any-
thing! You’re always thinking I mean things!”

He reached over and with both his hands pulled hers away from her
face and held them hard. She tried to free herself and could not.

“Say what you do mean,” he commanded.

She stopped struggling and looked suddenly sensible and mild. The sun
fell full on her vivid face, and it was ail he could do to keep from taking
her into his arms. “You didn’t even bring a hat, and your nose is already
freckling,” he accused her.

“That W£^n’t what I thought you were going to say,” she said softly.

“It isn’t,” he retorted, still holding her hands, “but you keep taking my
mind off . . , Margaret!”

“Yes?”

“Shall I go on?”

“If you must . .

He considered her, the red mouth, the creamy neck, and the little black
curls of her hair. “I’ll never give up,” he muttered.

She lowered her lashes at tMs and was silent, and he felt the triumph of
her yielding.

“Margaret,” he spoke her name in a deep and solemn voice, “for the
third time, I ask you— will you be my wife?”

Each time he had asked her she had responded differently. The first
time she had laughed, had shaken her head, and had run away. He had
been fool enough to blurt out his love for her at the senior dance, and
almost immediately her next partner had claimed her, a Groton fellow
whom he loathed, and not only because he had lost the editorship of the
Harvard Crimson to him. The second time was well considered. He had
walked home with her from church, and artfully taking her the long way
around, he had imagined that she would need his help on an icy road.
But she had been very independent indeed. When he had again asked her
to marry him she had said positively, “No.”

“Why not?” he had demanded, instantly hurt.

THE LONG LOVE

495

. “I don’t fee! like it,’’ slie had replied. '

To, that she had not been milling to add one word, and they had walked
the rest of the way in silence.

Now he waited trembling. She togged her hands away suddenly from
Ms, and he was terrified. But he let them go, quickly and sat in silence.
When she spoke, It was with unexpected thoughtful calm.

”Ned,:Of course I have been thinking a great deal. I knew you’d ask me
again. Goodness, how I know you— much better than you do me! That’s
the trouble. If I didn’t know you so thoroogMy Fd probably marry you
right off. But—”

■ .She paused, shook her, head, and looked sad. 'He felt his heart fall again,
like a .stone thrown in a well. ‘*W,hafs the matter with me?” he asked. He
was so wounded that he could not summon his pride.

He expected laughter, but he was further confounded when she lifted
serious eyes to Ms. “You’re good,” she replied with entire honesty. “It’s
me.”

His heart bounced up again. He leaned toward her ardently. ^Tf it’s only
that, Margaret, darling, darling, leave it to me. Fll take you as you are.”

But she moved away from him, out of reach of his hands. *'^There isn’t
anything the matter with me, Ned. It’s just— I want a very special kind of
marriage.”

He looked so blank that she gave him a slight push. “There— you see you
don’t even know what I mean!”

“Why don’t you tell me?” he demanded.

She considered this and began again. “I don’t want to be married the
way other people are. I want it to be splendid— fun, you know, and strong
enough for us to fly at each other when we feel like it, and say what we
really think, and yet know that nothing can separate us, not even moments
of hate. Fm not a careful person, Ned. I don’t want to have to stop and
think whether something is going to hurt your feelings. Fli get tired of that.
Everything’s got to he straight and strong and clear.”

“i.ean. take that,” he. said. .

“Fm not sure you can,” she retorted. Her firm hand busied itself with a
bit of crumbling wood on the log. Every time they met he had looked at
that hand to see if . it wore, a ring. The nightmare of /his life was that she
would engage 'herself to someone else before he had a chance to make her
see -.she, must marry' him.

,./ ".“How: can 1 make you sure?” he .asked. ...

“I don’t know,” she replied.

He had not imagined such an impasse as "this— Margaret willing to
marry him if she could be sure he w,aS' strong enough! He knew what she
meant. With her extraordinary intelligence she .had ' penetrated his weak-*
ness, the ease with which he could be wounded— Ms feelings hurt, as Ms
mother put it

496 '

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

.'‘You’re pretty smart/' he said slowly. “Any man takes his life in, his
hands when he marries a smart woman/’

“That’s true/’ she agreed,

“But it’s you or none, Margaret I’m that sort/’ he said slowly.

“If I marry you/’ she said gravely, “it will be my life and my career.
Will. It be yours?”

He looked into the clear and honest depths of her sea-blue eyes, and
then he saw dimly a vision of what marriage could mean to a man— a
companionship complete, a friendship profound, something as far above
the dull mating of the commonplace as man was above the beast. “Yes/’
he said. “That I can promise— and I do.”

“Then will you many me?” she asked.

The wnnder of these words lay in their simplicity. She spoke them
quietly, not moving to touch him, not putting out her hand.

“Are you~as.king me?^^ he gasped.

'“Yes!”.

“Oh, Margaret!”

He rose and drew her up to him. “Sure you mean it?”

“If you’ll keep your promise.”

With his right hand he pressed her head against his breast. “If you know
me so well, don’t you know I keep my promises?”

She lifted her head and looked at him. “Yes,” she said again. It was
assent and faith, and he trembled with fear and joy. . . .

Across this sublimity she broke a moment later with a murmur. He bent
to hear it.

“Fm hungry/’ she was saying into his coat, “aren’t you?”

He laughed and let her go. “Starved! But we can’t eat here on the
road.”: ■ '

“Why not? It isn’t as private as making marriage proposals.”

“No, but it’s not my idea.” He felt rising amazement. “Matter of fact,
none of it’s been what I planned this morning.”

“You planned?^^

“Of course. You don’t think I would leave the biggest thing in my life
to chance, do you?”

“Oh, Ned, do you plan everything?” she cried.

“Of course/’ he said stoutly.

She flew into a fit of incomprehensible laughter at this and ran to the
buggy and he untied the horse and leaped in beside her, and they began
to wind slowly up the trail. He put an arm about her and felt the astonishing
ineffable joy of her leaning upon him. She said, “Fll always be spoiling
your plans, because I only do things when I think of them.”

“I’ll learn that— and ever5^hing/’ he declared.

“But when you get to the picnic spot—”

“Ifs not a real spot,” he felt it only honest to say.

“Yes, it is, if you dreamed of it!” she insisted.

THE LONG' LOVE

497

Tbey fouiid it over the brow of tbe mouotaiia, beside aBo&er. stream,
that eddied m a smal pool. Both of them cried out at the same momefit
that it. was found, he pointing with the whip, .she with her forefi,iiger. He
unharnessed the horse and tethered, it' at a little distance and she unpacked
the.lnnch. His mother had put in a small'clean tablecloth, and inspired
by this, Margaret picked red oak leaves and laid them together for plates.
Upon them she placed the neat sandwiches, the cake, and the pie. He was
about to sit down beside her but she shook her head. ‘‘Sit ac.ross. from m.e,
Ned. I want to see how youll look every day at breakfast.''

■ He obeyed, and was mortified to feel that he looked foolishly shy.
not much to stare at/' he said, tiyi.ng to be casual.

^^Fve hated every handsome man I ever saw/' she remarked. '“Sandwich,

Nedr

He took one and bit into it. “You didn’t hate Harold Ames/’ he rem.md.ed
her.

“Don’t be silly— I did!” she retorted.

“Did he ask you to marry him?”

She bit deeply into her sandwich. “What if he did?” she asked.

“Nothing— only I do.n’t like it.” He was ashamed to tell her that jealousy
was one of Ms vices. Instinctively he knew that she would not tolerate
jealousy. Then he felt it a necessity to be honest with her. “FE have to
teH you Fm a jealous disposition— at least I think I am.”

“I know you are,” she said.

He looked at her. “Do you!” he rejoined somewhat feebly. Then Ms
rare humor glinted. “Are you always going to tell me you already know
everything I teM you? It’ll make for a dull marriage.”

“I won’t always tell you,” she said, dimpling. The two dimples in her
cheeks were what he had: seen first about her as a little girl at Chedbury
birthday parties.

“Know what Lucy Snell used to say about you?” he asked with wicked,
intent .

“What?”.

“She said you laughed on purpose to show your dimples.” ..

She laughed. “Maybe I do.” ■

' “Doesn’t anything ever make you angry, Margaret?” '■

“Not if I feel happy, and' I nearly always do,”'

He sighed. “I wish I could say that! , I . have the devil of a temper.”

“I don’t mind the temper if . you’ll bear, my not beiog afraid of it. 1
shan’t take anything from you, Ne.d.”'

“I , don’t want you to.” He put down Ms second sandwich and looked
at her earnestly. “Margaret, I' want to say something .now while Fm calm
and happier than Fve ever been In my Me. 'And T' want you to remember
it when Fm in one of my sulks,' 'and 'pay no .mMd 'tO :'me^

“Yes, Ned?” She put down her sandwich- that she might listen properly.

498 '

AMERICAH TRIPTYCH

you to be afraid of me, ever— or ever to yield to me.
Stand up' to me, Margaret— and help me!*’
will/’ she said softly.

“At whatever cost?” he asked sternly* ,

; “Yes!” Again her beautiful full yes-/

■ “Even if I should strike you?”

' Her eyes flashed. “If you hit me F'li hit you!” she said warmly.

They both laughed. “Free for all, eh?” he said fondly.

By common accord they leaned across the little tablecloth and kissed.

Thus passed the glorious day. He would not have dreamed of prolonging
' it beyond the prudence of Chedbury’s watchful eyes.' His tenderness for
her . was bottomless— he would protect her even from himself. So, timing
the drive home by the stand of the sun in the sky, soon after four he rose
from the spot where he had been lying at her feet while she sat on a low
old stump.

“We must be going, Margaret, if we’re to get home before sunset.”

“Why should we get home before sunset?” she inquired dreamily.

He did not answer at once, busying himself with harnessing the reluctant
horse. She knew as well as he did why they should get home and she was
teasing him. For a moment he toyed with the idea of accepting the prov-
ocation. He might say, “Very well, we won’t get home.” But he was afraid.
There was no telling how far her mischief might carry her. Once when
they were children someone had dared her to jump from the bam roof
on the Seaton place, and he had stood by, not believing that she would
be so foolish. But she had been so foolish and he could never forget the
horrible moment when she had jumped into the air and he saw her dark
curls flying behind her head and her arms outspread like wings.

“Remember the day you jumped off the barn roof?” he asked now.

“What makes you think of that?” she asked.

“I wonder!” He waited until the horse was ready. “Come, Margaret,”
he said firmly.

She wavered and then suddenly obeyed. The sight of her thus docile
drew the love out of him like lodestone and he took her into his arms
and kissed her more ardently than he had yet allowed himself.

“Oh, Ned,” she whispered, “we are going to be happy?”

“Of course we are,” he agreed.

So they came down the mountain through the late and golden sunshine,
and the trail became the country road and the road became again the
street of Chedbury, and by the time he reached the gate of her house
they were sitting decorously side by side and not too close. He leaped
down, opened the gate, and their hands clung for a moment.

“Good night,” she said softly and her eyes glowed dark as sapphires.

“Good night, dear love,” he said. “I’d call you tonight, but the family
is always about. Tomorrow FH be over to see your father,”

“Let me tell Mm first!”

THE LONG LOVE

499

He paused at this. Margaret—Ieave if to me to speak for myself/’

*‘Butwhy?” ,

*Td fee! better to have it so/’

“TheniVe got to' keep it all night? Fll tell Mother at least/’ ,

.''*No, Margaret/’ he insisted. “Tonight let’s just have it all tO' ourselves.”

She opened her mo'uth to protest, then did not. '

“All right, Ned/’ she said softly, and gave him her quick and brilliant
snide.

Upon this he left her and drove the horse and buggy to the livery stable
and went home on foot through the golden street.

Now that he was alone he felt solemn, exalted and set apart. He had
given Ms promise to Margaret that their- maiTiage would be his life and
his career.' What this meant he did not fully know, but he knew 'that
Margaret was his center.,' and ail he did must be built about her. He 'was
capable of devotion as few men were, perhaps, and it did not degrade
him to know it. He found a deep fulfillment in self-devotion. But he knew
that only Margaret could have called this fulfillment into being. Had he
married someone else, he would at this moment have been thinking of
himself. Now he was thinking of Margaret.

He lifted his head and breathed in the cool autumn air, sharp and pure.
He lifted his eyes to the moimtaio where so much had taken place. The
day was divided as cleanly as if a sword had cut across time. This morning
he had been one man and now he was another. His marriage was to be
like none he had ever seen.

He opened the hea'^’y walnut door of his father’s house and stepped into
the' hall and listened. The house was silent. Then he heard a m'urmur of
voices from the kitchen, his father’s and his mother’s. He wanted to tell
no one of what had come about this day. Tomorrow when he went to see
Mr. Seaton he would have to tell, and then his own family must know.-
But tonight'.must be the drawn-out dream which the day had been. He
tiptoed upstairs, entered his own room, and stood with Ms back to the
dosed door.

The room was impressed upon his memor}'. by childhood and youth,
and yet now it looked new to him. No, it looked as old as a -shell outgrown,
■a skin cast aside. His home was here no more. ■

He moved about silently, washed himself and changed his clothes, and
went downstairs. The door of The dining room was open, and he saw Louise
'setting ' the table. . ■

: ' He- paused at the door. .“Supper about ready?” -

'■ She looked at M.m vaguely. “I suppose so.” ■

“I’ll fetch the milk jug,” he said. He went into the kitchen and was
immediately aware that he had interrupted talk between his parents. His
father looked at Mm self-consciously, and his mother, continuing to stir
the gravy she was making in a saucepan, did not look at him.

“I’ve come to fetch the milk jug,” he said.

500

^AMmiCAN TRIPTYCH

|;J *lfs there,” Ms mother said*

II ' His father got to his ■ feet /from the chair behind the stove. ^‘Have a

II ; good day?” he asked, trying to be casual.

1 1 ^ “Yes, very good,” Edward said, trying to be as casual He opened, the

II - icebox and took out a bottle of milk and poured it and carried the jug

II into the dining room, Louise had finished the table and was at the. window
staring into the twilight of the street. He wondered what her thoughts were
II 1 and could not have asked, knowing full well how he at her age would

I' 1 1 have refused such a question.

; At the same moment his mother pushed open the door and came in,

I 1*1 canying a platter of sliced boiled beef, covered with the gravy, “Come

I I ' along, now,” she said briskly. “Let’s eat while the food is hot.”

n ; His father came in while she hurried back for potatoes and cabbage,

1;!,’ and they sat down. The evening, Edward thought, could be exactly like

I I ) every other. Only he knew that it was not.

“Edward!”

His mother’s ghostly voice woke him that night out of a sound sleep.
He saw her standing in the middle of his bedroom, wrapped in her gray
! ^ flannel dressing gown. Her hair was in curlers and her face was pale in

. ; ' the moonlight that fell through the wide open window.

I He sat up in bed, half dazed. “What’s wrong, Mother?”

I She came near and sat on the bed, then rose and shut the window and

I sat down in the barrel-backed chair, shivering.

I “That’s what I don’t know,” she said in a low tense voice. “I can’t sleep

1: ; for thinking of things.”

“Whiat things, Mother?” Instinctively he knew.

; | “Edward, I know something happened between you and Margaret

;|t today.”

“What makes you think so, Mother?”

“You were different all evening.”

“Was I?” He was flabbergasted at this, having fiattered Mmself that he
had been entirely natural
“Even Louise noticed it,” his mother said.

His stubbornness rose up in him and he did not reply. What claim had
anybody on his confidence until he chose to give it? He was no longer a
child. That he had spoken his love and that Margaret had accepted it made
them both free of the past.

“I don’t want to seem to inquire into your affairs,” his mother said
after a decent interval, “but it would hurt me if you got married without
telling me, Edward.”

“I am not married,” he said reluctantly,

“Are you engaged?” She put the question so swiftly that it was like the
pounce of a bird. He did not know how to parry it, being too honest.
“Wen, yes, I am,” he said slowly. Then his anger got the better of him.

THE LONG LOVE

was going to tell you tomorrow, Mother. It did seem to m,e more decent
to speak to Mr. Seaton irst, after I’d fo'und out Margaret’s mhid.”

“But Fm your mother,” she said.

He recognized the pained sadness in, her voice. How often in. his child-
hood had it compelled him to acts which he had hated! in his adolescence
it . had still compelled him, although he had occasionally protested and
with anger. That phase had passed, too, and he had learned to reinaia.
sile.iit when he caught the overtones in his mother’s voice. Now, sitting up
In hl.s bed, he was enraged to feel her forcing him back into his adoiesce.iice.
All his . new manhood resisted her. He set his lips firmly and gazed, at a
print .O.E the wa.ll .above her head. It was one. he had.chose.ii himse'if when
he was .fifteen, a white ship sailing at full speed over a bright 'Hue sea,
under a sky as blue. He .knew now that as a print it was not the best, but
on so many mornings had he waked to that fresh blue sea and flying ship
that he would have missed it, had .it been gone. He thought, “Fli want to
take that with me.”

“You’re not going to say a word?” his mother inquired.

“Not till tomorrow, Mother.”

“Then I call it heartless of you,” she declared. Her square face turned
a coppery red and she pulled at her corded belt and tied it more tightly.
“AndT shall go on and say what I was going to say. We’ve nothing to be'
ashamed of. Your father’s business is as good as any in Chedbury or
around. What I’m saying is for your own good.”

“Don’t say it, Mother,” he broke in.

“I will say it!” Her voice rose. “Fm not to be stopped by my own son,
I hope, I warn you, Edward, you’ll never be happy with those Seatons.
She’s a stuck-up proud girl, and she hasn’t a proper decency.”

He kept his eyes on the flying ship and the blue that was' the color of
Margaret’s eyes.

“A poor housekeeper, too! And, Edward, they don’t think a thing of
divorce. . You know even Thomas Seaton’s own sister has been divorced.
That’s why 'she has to live in Paris, Decent , people won’t have her here.
And where does old' Seaton- get his money? He’s never worked enough to
have it. Somewhere in New York, speculating!. Who knows? And' they have
no religion— he’s a freethinker, -and she’ll have freethinking ways and bring
up your children- different from all of us, and I’ll have- no comfort in them.”

: He glanced nervously at her hands. They were trembling and he knew -
what would happen. The next moment she began , to cry soundlessly, and
then: she hurried out of the room, leaving the door wide open. He sighed,
got up,; closed the door and opened the- window' and turned off the lamp.
He’d have to tell Margaret th.at after all his. mother- had wormed it out of
him. Only by thinking of Margaret, only by going over the whole day,
minute by minute, was he able to reinforce his determination and renew
his love and so begin again his own life; Then he fell asleep, comforted.
His mother did not matter any more.

502

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Under Ills everyday exterior the next morning Edward concealed from
his mother any memory of their conversation in the night. With determi-
nation he kept himself from calling Margaret on the telephone^ even from
his father’s office. For his father, after muttering his usual blessing and
then in abstraction eating half his breakfast, had suddenly said, you
have nothing better to do, Edward, I could take a little help in the office
this morning.”

Edward nodded and nothing more was said between them. His mother
was silent, too, beyond the necessary questions about the food, and Louise
ate in her usual silence. But Edward knew, as well as though words had
told him, that his mother had repeated to his father the midnight scene,
and that this morning at the office his father would manage to be alone
with him and to say something. He could not imagine what it would be.

But none of it mattered, he told himself. Yesterday was true, and this
afternoon he would see Margaret. He did not look forward with pleasure
to his interview with Tomas Seaton, but he was not afraid of it. He would
be dignified and self-assured, knowing that he had Margaret’s promise, and
even if the older man objected, the marriage would go on just the same.

The meal was finished, and Edward and his father rose simultaneously.
‘T’ll meet you at the door, Father,” he said.

He kissed his mother, as he knew she liked him to do, nodded to Louise,
and left the room. Out in the hall he toyed again with the temptation of
calling Margaret, and decided against it. He suspected that she slept late
and it would be harder to call and not hear her voice than not to call.
He put on his brown gabardine topcoat and a few minutes later he and
his father were walking down the street together. Chedbury was peculiarly
pleasant in the morning, the houses clean, the windows shining, and smoke
curling softly from the chimneys. Sooner or later front doors opened and
other men came briskly out to go to work. So he and his father proceeded,
exchanging few words, but the silence was easy.

At the shop he fell behind to allow his father to go ahead and the men
looked up and nodded and he followed his father into the rather large
office.

^^Sit down there,” his father said. “I’ll give you some proofs to read.”

Edward obeyed, taking off his hat and coat and hanging them on a rack
in the corner. The office had not changed during all the years he had
known it, and he had often sat here in the odd hours he had helped his
father during vacations.

He began to read the proofs, dull pages of a pamphlet being put out by
some historical society, and it was the middle of the morning when suddenly
his father spoke.

“Edward,” he said solemnly, “how do you propose to make your
living?”

Edward looked up. He knew that his father had shown extraordinary
patience not only on this day, but during the past four years, while he

THE LONG LOVE

•503

had been pursuing, his somewhat leisurely way through college. The very
necessity of Ms father’s youth to make an -early livelihood had made him
take pride in being patient with his son,

think it’s the first time you have ever asked. me the question, Father,”
he said. He put down proofs and pencil, and wheeled around on liis screw-
bottomed chair.

®T’ve .never had to ask you,” his father said proudly. “But the time has
come now when I presume you will want to earn your own way, and
certainly the time has come when Fd like to ease yoor mother’s life a
little,. I want her to have help hx the house. She hasn’t been willing so long
as .you were in college , and the other, two in school She as strong as
she was—it stands to reason a woman can’t be. Fve told her to hire som.e~
body this week.” .

‘‘T’m glad of that,” Edward said heartily, and paused,

‘Well?” his father said. ,

Edward smiled his slight cool smile. “It would be easy to say I know
what I want to do, Father, if I had any special talent. .But I haven’t—
except a general interest in books.”

“Books?” his father repeated, astonished.

“Are you surprised?” Edward inquired. “But you’ve printed books all
these years.”

“Not just books,” Ms father corrected him. “Fve printed anything that
came my way— catalogues, pamphlets, bulletins, wedding announcements,
Christmas cards, anything.”

“I’m thinking you might like me to take the book section of the business
and develop it a little,” Edward said daringly.

He saw immediately that this was an entirely new and somewhat fright-
ening idea to his father.

“Books are a risk,” his father said slowly. “Look at them piled up in
the second-hand shops in Boston! It scares me every time I go there. People
rea-d them, once and then sell them.”

“They have to buy them before they can read them,” Edward argued.

“All these newfangled public libraries,” his father went on. “That fellow
Carnegie— the book business will sink to nothing. Who’s going to buy a
book if he can read it - for nothing?”

■ -“WMl you take me on for a, year?” - Edward asked. '

-His father’s opposition crystallized what -had been the vaguest ' wander-
ings of Ms own mind. It -was true that he did not .know what he wanted to'
do for a livelihood. In college hC' had lived, by the chance of a roommate,
in the midst of a group of yO'Ung men who- had not needed to think of
work immediately after graduation, and he had fallen into the way of
contemplation rather than activity. Yet he knew that this was an atmos-
phere entirely alien to him, and that , he "must : indeed work with all his
ability as soon as possible. But he' had been - graduated only last June.
Beyond all else, he had felt that until he had settled the matter of his

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

marriage witli Margaret, he could not choose a livelihood. Too much de-
. pended on the life that she would want and where they might choose to
live. He was somewhat perturbed now by his own abruptness in the decision
,he.,:had made even for a year.

His father meanwhile had been pondering the question. ^‘Maybe Tor a
year,” he said slowly. ‘Til talk with Mather, provided you don’t do any-
thing to call for extra capital.”

Edward did not reply for' a moment. The business depression, which
had terrified his father and had shadowed his last year at college, was
perhaps beginning to recede. The banks had been saved by the millionaires,
staking their fortunes against the fears of little men with nothing. His father
had been almost revoitingly grateful to “the big fellows.”

“If I can’t convince you by the end of the year to put in some capital,
I shall consider myself a failure,” Edward said.

He was about to wheel his chair around again when his father raised
his hand. “Wait a minute, son—I promised your mother something.”

Edward saw him flush and immediately felt at ease. “Mother was cross
with me in the night, I know,” he said frankly. “But, Father, if you don’t
mind, I’ll just wait until tomorrow and then everything will be clear.”

“Your mother is easily hurt, son,” his father reminded him.

“I know, because she has passed that same quality on to me,” Edward
said quietly, “But I think it’s wrong to be so quick to be wounded, and
it’s a trait I mean to get over.”

He turned then in good earnest and picking up his pencil he went to
work again, and his father said no more. They went home together at
noon and only the barest words of business passed between them. They
ate in almost entire silence the noon meal of meat and vegetables and
an apple pie and then Edward went upstairs to his own room. He knew
that Thomas Seaton slept for an hour between one and two. It was his
intention to reach the house in time to see Margaret before her father
waked and then, as soon as possible afterward, to appear before him.

He washed, examined his somewhat too easily growing beard, and
decided to shave again. Then he dressed himself in his good dark blue
serge suit, white shirt, and stiff collar. The tie he usually wore was dark
blue, too, but today, thinking of Margaret, he chose one she had given
him last Christmas of wine-red satin with a stripe of blue. Thus arrayed,
with care to his shoes and his nails, he felt that he had done all he could,
and he went downstairs and out of doors without seeing his mother or
looking for her. But some impulse when be was on his way made him
turn his head and he saw her standing at the sitting-room window, looking
out after him, her hand over her mouth. He could not see her eyes, but
he felt their painful and earnest gaze, and he lifted his arm and waved
to her. With no more than an instant’s hesitation she waved back to him
with her white handkerchief, and at the effort, all his resentment left him.

THE LONG LOVE

505

As well as fee knew, feiinself, .he knew her. and that she had .fo.rg.ivee. fe.i.'fTi.
and fee was tfe.e happier for it.

^^Softfee.arted, that’s what I am/'^ fee thought half sadly,- an.d WGiidered
whether his life would be the harder for his ■ soft heart. .

Thus somewhat soberly he approached the big brick house wh.icli.
Cfeedbory merely called ‘^Seatons’.” It stood back from, the street In the
midst of' its traditional elms, and the lawn was thick with failing leaves.
No one was to be seen except the small hunched' figu.re of old Bill. Co.re4
who tended the garden. He was gathering leaves slowly ’wi.!h a bamboo
rake as Edward went up the brick ' walk.

“Anybody around?” Edward , asked,

“Not that Fve saw,” Bill replied. He leaned on his rake. “Who’re you
lookin’ for?”

.“Margaret?” Edward said tentatively.

“Out- under the apple tree behind the house last I saw,” Bill said. “That
was before dinner, though.” He chewed slowly and grindi.n.gly, and spat a
large dark brown blob into the leaves.

But Edward did not go to the apple tree. He felt some fomiality k the
afternoon ahead of him and he went up the five marble steps to the front
door of the house. There he rang the bell. Usually the maid opened the.
door but this time to his pleasure Margaret herself flung it wide.

“I saw you coming,” she said softly. “He’s just waking up. How beau-
tiful you look! Don’t you love that tie? Promise me youll let me choose
ail your ties! Shall we stay outside a bit?”

“I’d rather get it over,” he said, still on the threshold.

She laughed, “Poor Ned! He’s not too bad, really. Though 1 rather
think— ” she broke off and shook her head.

He stepped inside the door. “Think what?” he demanded.

“Fd better not tell you.”

“Margaret, tell me!” he insisted,

“No, I won’t,” she declared. “Because it’s too silly.”

“But you thought it!”

“Well, I think very silly things— often.”

Before he could protest again Thomas Seaton’s voice shouted suddenly
from the library. “Who are you talking to, Margaret?”

She turned her head toward the voice. “To Ned, Father!”

There was. a grunt to this .and sile.nce. -

“He’s only just waked,” Margaret explained. .

“Tellme what you were thinking about?” Edward said stubbornly.

“Gh, my goodness,” she said suddenly. “Well, it was - this— Father once
had the idea that he w-'anted me to marry somehody— a man in New York.”

“He did?” Edward exclaimed. Rage ran in. his veins -suddenly and he
took a step toward the library. Then he turned.. She was standing with both
hands folded under her chin, looking at him with bright blue eyes, not
laughing,, and he came back.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

**Yoii can®t change your mind now,’^ he said gravely*

She shook her head. “No fear,” she said.

; ' Theretipon ' his rage and his pride comhined , and' he, walked into the
library. The afternoon was- warm, and ' the room was sunlit and silent
Tobacco and leather and old books scented the air with a dry and musky
odor, A lon,g window opened to the always neglected gardens and yellow
leaves from an elm tree drifted across the panes. Thomas Seaton sat be-
tween the arms of a sagging leather armchair and Edward saw his grizzled
red head leaning on its back.

“Is that you, Peg?” he said drowsily.

:■ " Margaret answered from the door. “Father, I told you Ned was coming
to see you,”

Edward turned and frowned at her. “Go away, please, Margaret,” he
said. “I shan’t want you here while we’re talking.”

She made a face at him and vanished, shutting the door with unnecessary
noise.

Thomas Seaton laughed. “That’s right, my boy,” he said in his slow
rich voice. “Order her about. It’s good for her. Come and sit down,”

Without moving even to lift his head, he pursed his thick lips at the
chair across the hearth and there Edward sat down. Margaret’s father, he
thought, was not prepossessing. His stained tweed vest was open and his
belt unloosed, and over the brown shirt he wore his big hands were folded.
He had taken off his shoes and had put his feet on a faded brown velvet
hassock. But his large sleepy face was benign and amused.

“Eh?” he said.

“There’s no use my beating about the bush at this late day, Mr. Seaton,”
Edward said promptly. “I suppose you’ve noticed that I’ve been interested
in Margaret for years.”

“I’ve noticed,” Thomas Seaton said dryly. “But there’ve been others.”

“Well, I’m different from them all, I think,” Edward said, allowing him-
self the smallest of smiles. “I asked her to marry me yesterday and she
said she would,”

“She’s a very changeable miss, and it wouldn’t be fair of me to keep
that from you,” Thomas Seaton retorted.

“She’s never said ‘yes’ to me before, nevertheless, and I shan’t let her
change her mind,” Edward said firmly.

Thomas Seaton laughed again. “Then what have you come to see me
about?” he inquired.

“I wanted to tell you myself,” Edward said. At the older man’s laughter
he felt his ready pride ruffle and prick and he was grave.

Thomas Seaton unfolded his hands and pulled out a yellowed silk hand-
kerchief from his pocket and rubbed his face all over. The act seemed
to wake him. He opened his eyes wide, sat up in Ms chair, and began
to stuff tobacco into an old meerschaum pipe.

“If I must take this seriously,” he said, “then Fd better put my mind

THE LONG XO\^

507 .

to it. Margaret. s My favorite child, and I. can’t. |o,st give her away. How
are you plaiming to make a. living, yoimg man?”

I hope you realize ,I wouldn’t ask Margaret to be my wife, without
giving some thought a.s to her support,” Edward replied, ‘*My father has
the print shop as you know, Mr. Seaton. I s.hall help h,im there, and likely
take it over some day.”

You areiit the only son,” fhomas Seaton said in the sa.me dry voice.'

“No, sir, but Fm. five years older than Baynes, and there’s ,iio com„petition
there. By the tiine he s read}*' to work, I’ll be well up in the b'usiiiess—
maybe its head. Dad owns the business, really. Mr. Mather has turned
eighty, you know.”

, “Don’t' push your father about,” the older man said suddenly. ■

“I wouldn’t think of it,” Edw^ard replied hotly.

Ihomas Seaton began to puff on his pipe. He leaned back again, “A
temper of your own, I see,”

“Fm sorry,” Edward said 'instantly.

“How much do you think you’ll make— let’s say, at your top?”

Edward hesitated. His father made, he supposed, five or six thousand
a year. Whether that would seem much or little to a Seaton he had no way
of knowing. He looked into Seaton’s eyes, blue and bright. “I have no way
of knowing,” he said frankly. “It aU depends on myself. I shall do more
than carry on the shop. I’ve told my father that I want to begin to print
books for myself-publish them. That might do very well.”

“You like books?” Thomas Seaton inquired.

“There’s something about them,” Edward admitted reiuctantly. He did
not wish to reveal to this observing older man the peculiar inllueiice of
books upon Mm. Without any desire to write a book of his own, ail his
creative mind stirred when he held a good book in his hand. If, after he
had read it, he felt it become a part of himself, it was precious to Mm.
He wanted it well bound and more than once he had gone to Boston and
had ordered rebound in scraps of leather or mohair some book which he
felt had become his own,

“Know anything about book publishing?” Thomas Seaton inquired.

“I have my own feelings about it,” Edward replied.

A long silence fell upon them after tMs. Thomas Seaton’s eyes closed'
and 'Edward 'Wondered ' if 'he were about to fall asleep again. He waited
k' respectful though impatient, silence.- But the .older man was 'Hot asleep.
He began to talk, his eyes still closed.

“If you and Margaret have fixed it up, I suppose Fll have to take it.
Not that ' there’s any objection to you in my . mindF But ' whether you 'are;
the, .man, .for,. .her, I-'- don’t, know, and, I don’t suppose she, .knows 'Until 'she"„
has, ..tried; .you,”:'.;./.

At tMs Edward remembered the' warnings- of, his mother, in the 'Mght.
Divorce was-in this family. He would have none of', that, however, 'things''.

went between him and Margaret. mean to make a success of my mar-
riage/' he said doggedly.

do we all/' Thomas replied. *‘But it’s more than yoor marriage, my
boy. It’s the woman, too, and she can wreck any marriage, if she’s a mind
to do it, Margaret’s a handful, and there’s no use In pretending she Isn’t
She gets it from her mother. I had to beat her mother once— it was with
"an umbrella, I remember. I’d just come back from London, and she took
a' fancy to some man or other while I was away. It’s' in their blood. Fd
bought a good strong umbrella at Harridge’s and when she told me the
first thing that she’d changed her mind about me I said, ‘No, you haven’t/
and went after her with the umbrella. She cried, but I didn’t give an inch.
I slept with her that night, and the next day she was ail right again. I never
even knew the man’s name.”

He chuckled and Edward listened with horror. What would his mother
have said to this sorry tale? Thank God she need never know!

“The moral of that is,” Thomas Seaton went on, “you keep a strong
hand with Margaret!”

“I’ll do my best,” Edward said with reserve, “though it could never
come to beating— not with me,”

“Ah well,” Thomas Seaton said. “You’ll devise your own weapons. But
there’s worse than an umbrella.” He coughed, sat up and fumbled for his
leather slippers, found them, and put them on. Then he stood up. “Peg!”
he shouted.

The door opened so quickly that Edward wondered as he rose punc-
tiliously to his feet if Margaret had been listening at the keyhole. He dis-
missed the thought as unworthy, but her father laughed as he sat down
again,

“You’ve been listening, you scalawag,” he said to her.

“No, I haven’t,” Margaret replied, dimpling. “I would have but I was
afraid it might make Ned angry. He isn’t used to it, I was only standing
, on call. Do sit down, Ned.”

sat down on the hassock between the two of them, her long beautiful
hands clasped about her knees.

shall he have me, Father?” she asked,
says he will,” her father replied.

love was between these two, and Edward felt it jealously, as the
es of father and daughter met and melted and spoke. It was unfair,
for the older man to have had the advantage of long years with
her, watching her as she grew from birth to womanhood. What other man
to have such knowledge of her? Then it occurred to him that
relation between his own father and Louise, and again
in this Seaton family that made them

Seaton asked. “It goes two ways,

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

THE LONG LOVE

509

, Margaret smiled her deep dimpled smile. ‘‘It’s taken me years to make
lip my mind/’ she s.aid. frankly.

“Nonsense,” Edward said abruptly. “You only made it up yesterday-
you know that, Margaret. Why, even yesterday morning, you were wanting

to put off the picnic. And twice you—”

.He stopped, aware that Thomas Seaton was listening avidiv and with
laughter bright in his eyes,

, Only twice? Seaton said. “That’s nothing, .man! Her mother bro,ke
our engagement nine times.”

He and .Margaret Joined in laughter offensively loud to Edward’s ear.
‘At any rate,” he said soberly, “she’s made up. her mind, whether yesterday
or not”

Margaret turned on Edward vividly.- “I began as.kiiig. myself' t.he very
first day I saw you whether Fd marry you or not.”

^ He could scarcely believe this and yet it stirred him to the bottom of
Ms soul. “But we’ve always known each other,” he said feebly, '

“I’ve always been asking,” she said promptly.

“Then why did you turn me down so hard?” he demanded.

“Oh, you took so long to grow up,” she said scornfully. “I really thought
you’d never be a man— and I hate boys. You’re still not really grown up,
Ned, but I can see you will be, some day.”

Thomas Seaton got to his feet and waved his big hands. “You two are
as good as married,” he said, swallowing Ms laughter. “Don’t be too sharp
with Mm, Peg. He’s a good young man. Don’t get wicked with him.”

He ambled sidewise toward the door, his hands in his pockets now and
his coattails in the air. “And Edward, I advise you— get yourself a good
English umbrella. You’ll need it”

He went out and left the two of them, taking care to close the door.
Margaret blew a kiss after Mm and turned to Edward warmly. “Isn’t
he adorable? He shut the door because he understands us. He understands
everybody, I think~me best of all.” She pulled the hassock forward and
leaned her head upon Edward’s knees. “Gh, how blissful I am!”

“Are you really happy?” Edward asked. He had been slightly repelled
by her father’s forethought as though the old man had coarsely imagined
that they would at once want to begin to make love! But he could not
resist the sight of Margaret’s dark head on Ms knees. What grace of God
that she had her mother’s dark curly hair, and her father’s blue eyes! With
red hair she would have been quite another woman. Besides, he did not
like' red hair. ■ ' . ■

“Oh, happy!” she repeated dreamily. “To think I needn’t worry any
more about getting married! It’s aH settled at last, and 1 can put my mind
M.'Somethmg else.”: ^ :

He was amazed again, and he said, withdrawing Ms hand from her head,
“Think of what? You needn’t have worried about it.”

But she took Ms hand and pillowed her soft cheek in his palm. “Of

AMEEICAN TRIPTYCH

course I worried,”: sbe ' said frankly. ■ "'Every girl does. How did I know
you, would ask me again, and how did I know whether even if you did
I would say yes? And suppose I said no, would you ask me yet again?
How did I know? And suppose you didn’t, what could I do, that is supposing
I wanted you to ask me again?”

' He sighed, and then drew her strongly into' Ms arms. "Stop it there,
Margaret,” he commanded. "lust be still with me for a while, will you?
I’m somewhat overcome.”

She laughed softly at this, but she yielded, and be sat in the warm golden
room, holding her, completely happy, except for the slight gnawing fear
that the door might open suddenly to show someone’s surprised face. He
was chagrined that she divined the fear and rose, walked across the room
and locked the door. Then she came back and curled into his arms again,
and he sat holding her and feeling Ms love grow, second by second, until it
terrified him with joy. Her right arm crept around him under his coat,
and her left hand up to Ms cheek, and understanding, after a while, the
soft steady pressure of that left hand, he yielded, turning Ms face to hers,
and bending to her he joined his lips to hers in a long kiss.

From this kiss it was he who first moved away. He trembled at the
power she had over him. Her lips, thus fastened to Ms, made his blood
fire and his limbs were melted. He struggled against such giving up of
himself. Somewhere in him, if he was to remain master of Ms life, there
must be a place where he stood alone to survey all that he had, even her.

"Come, my dear,” he said resolutely.

She looked at him languidly and he had to harden himself against the
roselike face upon his breast.

"I must go home, darling,” he said tenderly. "My father and mother
must be told, too, you know.”

He was utterly unprepared for her again. For she sprang from his arms,
face eager and even excited. "Oh, what fun!” she cried. "Now FIl
with you.”

got to his feet "But will it be the thing to do?” he muttered.

"Why not?” she asked robustly. "Don’t I have to know them? Oughtn’t
;y to know me?”

“I suppose so,” he said uncertainly.

and looked down at herself. "This old dress!” she ex-
claimed passionately, "rilhave to change.”

had not noticed what she wore, but now he saw that it was a dress
of faded blue linen, crumpled by his crushing her in his arms.

"What’ii I wear?” she asked anxiously. Then she put her hand on Ms
)s, "No, don’t tel! me—I must be myself.”

that she hastened out of the room and he went over to the window
stood looking out into the quiet weedy garden. Some old-fashioned
chrysanthemums were blooming under the elms, brilliant spots of red and

statue of a naked boy

THE LONG LOVE

51.1

looked out miscMevoiisiy from a pool choked with leaves. A year from
BOW, he supposed, he would be married. He and Margaret would be liviug
somewhere In Chedbury-that was a thmg they had to plan, too.. He w^oiild
have BO living with their fa,milies, neither his nor hers. There was plenty
of room in, this .huge, old house, but he .would ■ refuse to co.esid.er it. If he
was to make her happy, he’d have to have her to himself.

' She came back in a ' few minutes, wearing a new aiituniii' suit of a
heather blue and a so.ft felt hat. Nobody in Chedbury wore clothes like
hers, so plain and soft, and she was beautiful in them.

‘T got it in London,” she said, “Do you .like it?”

,“It suits you,” he said. And then overcome with, her beauty he was
humbled to pain, “Oh, Margaret, can you be patient with, me and ,m.in.e.?”
he asked. He took her gloved hands. “We’re com,moii, folk, compared. to
you.” .'

She gave him a smile tender and exquisite. “I’m only .marrying you—
that’ s what we’ve to remember,” she said.

He felt her words strong and comforting, and he put his arms about
her shoulder and gave her a hard squeeze. “That’s right,” he said heartily.
“Remind me of it every morning, will you?”

They walked out into the afternoon sunlight and the sense of the magic
of his life crept into Edward’s consciousness. It was impossible to Imagine
that his wife, his house, could be like those of any other man. Whatever
the faults of others, he and Margaret were beyond their possibility. They
carried happiness within themselves, in their youth and health and humor
and in the quality of their love. He strode along at her side, just enough
taller than she to be complacent, his step matched to hers, and hidden
between them were their clasped hands.

“Ned,” she said suddenly, “I’ll have to tell you that 1 did tell Mother
last night, after all.”

“You did?” he cried.

“I couldn’t help it. She came into my room when 1 was getting ready
for bed and saw it all over me, I suppose. So I simply said yes, I was
engaged, and she said she was glad of it.”

In the agitation of his interview he had forgotten the midnight scene
with his own mother. Now he thought of it and was troubled as to whether,
in honesty, he should tell Margaret of his mother’s doubts. He decided to
postpone the telling.

“Is that all your mother said?” he asked.

“Weil, she said we’d have to begin talking about when we’d have the
wedding, and where we’d live.”

“So we shall,” he agreed, “and that brings me to the question. What
do you want for a ring?”

“A sapphire,” she said so promptly that he was surprised.

“Sounds as if you’d had it picked for a long time,” he observed.

512

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH,

ba¥e,” she said. “I know exactly where it is— in an old jewelry store
in, .New York.”

, you mean to say yon had the ring picked before yon had the man?”
he demanded and was vaguely pained.

She laughed and squeezed his arm with both hands. “I began thinking
about the ring the night. I said I wouldn’t marry you— the ■ first time— re-
member?”

■ , Did he , remember! However happy he was he’d never forget that
evening. ■ '

She had not paused for his answer. ^‘And then I thought, if I ever did
marry you, Fd want a sapphire, set in a wide band, and so when I went
to New York-” ,

**Gh, Margaret! And I was suffering so, thinking you’d never have me—”

‘Then you were silly. Good sapphires are fearfully hard to find— good
ones, that is— and I did find one.”

“But suppose it had been sold?”

“Oh, I found it only this spring, and I begged the old man to keep it
for me, for I knew Fd be married sometime,”

“Even if not to me, I supposel”

“Don’t be jealous, Ned, and he said I surely would, too, but just in
case would I put down twenty-five dollars on account.”

“Margaret, you didn’t!”

“I did, so the ring is safe, and I should think you’d be glad.”

He was too confounded by all this to know whether he was glad or sorry,
and it took him five full minutes of contemplation. This was only brought
to an end by her voice, begging him.

“Ned, please forgive me— it was awfully forward of me. I can see that
now.”

He was pleased to forgive and he did so fully and magnanimously.
“It’s odd, Margaret— there’s no pretending it isn’t. But it’s you, and that’s
ail that matters. We’d better go tomorrow to New York and fetch it, I
suppose.”

“Oh, lovely!” Her rich voice sighed out the rich word, and he knew
that he had behaved well. Upon this satisfaction they entered the house
and he was pleased to see that his father had just got home and had not
time, therefore, to change his respectable office suit of gray cloth for the
patched brown smoking jacket in which he spent his evenings, although he
was on the stair.

“Father!” he called from the door.

His father turned. “Yes?”

“Fve brought Margaret, Father. It’s all settled—”

His father came down the two steps he had mounted and held out his
hand shyly. “Well, Margaret— we’ve always known each other, I guess,
without much more than speaking—”

THE mm LOVE 513

yes, Mr. Haslatt.” Margaret’s voice, her oiitstretched ■ hand were
warm and instant

His mother, came to the door of the 'hall, and slipped off her apron
and threw it behind her. Something had been expected, Edward surmised,
for she wore her second-best black dress and she had pot a fresh, white
niching in the high boned collar.

“Edward, am I to congratulate you?” she asked.

Behind the stilted words he saw her as she had been last night and he
met her stiffly. “Yes, please, Mother. It’s all decided. I had a talk with Mr.
Seaton.”

“Welcome, Margaret—”

His mother, unrelentingly grave, led them, into the sitting room and
there Louise sat with a magazine. She got up awkwardly, her face flushing.

“Louise,” her mother said formally, “Edward has come to tel! us that
he and Margaret are engaged.”

Louise smiled a little and yielded her hand to Margaret, who clasped it
and held it “Oh, I’ve known Louise since she was born! I hope you won’t
mind me! Fm glad to have another sister.”

In a moment they were all sitting down, not knowing what to say, and
Margaret, her warm eyes seeing everything, began to talk rapidly and
gaily.

“Oh, I hope you will all like me— because I do so like all of you. Fm
going to try so hard to make Ned a good wife. You’ll have to teach me
lots, Mrs. Haslatt Mother’s a dreadful housekeeper, in fact. She just
doesn’t keep house— but I want to be good at it. I don’t even want a maid,
because if I have one FM never learn for myself. May I come sometimes
on Saturdays and leam, dear Mrs. Haslatt?”

There never was so enchanting a woman, Edward told himself and he
saw without surprise that his mother was melting.

“Weil, I don’t know, Fm sure, that Fm such a wonder,” she began.

“Yes, you are, Mother,” he said heartily, “and I shall take it as a kind-
ness if you’ll tell Margaret everything. I’m sure she’s right when she says
she doesn’t know any thing.”

He was surprised to hear himself talking in this easy Seaton fashion to
his own mother, and she looked at him suspiciously but was silent. Marga-
ret picked up the silver ball of talk where he dropped it,

“Ned, III surprise you! I can leam when T want to, and Fm going to
buy a little book and put everything into it. ‘Mrs. Haslatt’s muffins,’ ‘Mrs.
Haslatt’ s cream tomato soup—’ ” She broke off. “I can’t go on saying Mrs.
Haslatt, can I? Fll say Mother Haslatt.”

Edward saw his father absorbing all this, drinking in Margaret’s warmth
and charm and beauty, his eyes yearning and his mouth open under his
gray mustache. Louise, too, was gazing at Margaret, forgetting her shyness,
leaning forward on her elbows. Only his mother struggled against her own
yielding.

514

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

^^Maybe Edward, will like new ways,” Ms. fatber said slowly. „ :

Edward felt, as Ms own the potential hurt to Ms mother in these words.

‘^There’s nothing- 1 like' better than the way Mother cooks,” he: said
quickly. , ■ ■

didn’t mean that,” his father replied. think it’s only right for young

people to do differently from the old ones. I’d expect' that.” ■ -

‘‘I’m sure I don’t want them to copy my ways,” his mother said In the
suppressed voice, whose misery Edward recognized at once.

“We understand,”, Margaret said.

Edward got up. “Margaret, I must get you home,” he said with authority.

She rose. “All right, Ned.” Then she turned impulsively to Ms mother.
“Mrs, Hasiatt, will you let us have him tonight for dinner? Is it too selfish
of me? But we haven’t seen my mother yet—not together. I’ll send Mm
home early.”

Now his mother was compelled to speak. “I suppose it’s all right. Though
I have Ms supper here ready—”

Mark Hasiatt spoke suddenly. “Let him go, Ruth. There are not many
days like these in any man’s life.”

The suppressed feeling in all of them was released suddenly with these
words and it filled the room. Edward wanted to get away. “Til be back
early, Mother,” he muttered. He took Margaret’s arm and hurried her
away.

The evening was like none he had ever spent in the Seaton house, but
then he had never been accepted into the family before. Margaret brought
him into the library, pulling Mm gently with her hand in his. She was the
middle child, and her elder brother Tom and her younger sister Sandra
were already there, with their parents.

“We always gather in the library for a bit before dinner,” she said. It
was Seaton to call it dinner, he thought, and he wondered if in his own
house his supper would be dinner. He frowned slightly, thinking of how
many such things remained ahead of him to decide. For that the decision
was chiefly to be his It would not have occurred to him to doubt.

They all looked at him with friendly faces as he came in, but nobody
moved. He knew that they had been talking about the engagement, and
he felt kindliness in the air, although it was restrained. Tom he knew
casually, without intimacy, and Sandra he had noticed chiefly because she
was about Louise’s age, but so much prettier that he had felt sorry for
Louise. She had a bright pert face, and Thomas Seaton had given her his
red hair. Margaret’s mouth was delicate in its fullness but Sandra’s was
sulky. Tom did not lift his tall loose-boned body from the deep chair in
which he sat, but he grinned. Some shyness made Edward want to draw
Ms fingers from Margaret’s, but she held him firmly and marched straight
to her mother.

Mrs. Seaton sat in a high-backed red velour-covered chair by the fire-

THE LONG LOVE

515 ^

place. Tbe; fire had been lit, and since the lamp was shaded the light from
the flames flickered over her beautiful and willful face, still so young under
the rolls of her white hair. She wore a black velvet gown, old-fashioned in
its fullness, and there was a ruffle of white lace about her neck.

■ “Mother,” Margaret said abruptly. “I asked Ned to dinner .so that you
could get to know Mm.” \

Mrs. Seaton put out a hand long and slender like Margaret’s, but it was
bright with rings. When Edward took it in his hand he knew that although
it looked like Margaret’s it was soft as hers could never be. There was
steel somewhere, in Margaret’s hand.

“You’re so silly, Meg,” Mrs. Seaton murmured. “How can I get to
know him in one evening?”

“You’ve got to like him in one evening anyway, Mother, because Fm
going to marry him.”

“Is there any reason why I should not like you?” Mrs. Seaton inquired,
looking at Edward with her direct brown gaze.

“Sit down, my boy,” Thomas Seaton intervened. “Don’t let yourself be
made the center of a sparring match between two women. Tom, why
don’t you exert yourself?”

Tom did not move. “He may as well know me at my worst, Father,”
he said in a pleasant deep voice.

“Do sit down, Ned,” Margaret said. “Sandra, why are you speechless?”

“Because it seems so odd to think you’re going to get married,” Sandra
retorted. She sat on the leather hassock, bent over so the skirt of her green
velvet frock flowed over her feet. “Besides,” she said in the drawling voice
which was her present affectation, “I can’t stand up or he’ll see how short
this old frock is. Father’s too stingy to get me a new one. Edward, that’s
the kind of family you’re marrying into!”

“She’s lying, Ned,” Margaret said carelessly. “The trouble is she wants
one of the new sheath things and Father has only just let me have one.”

She went out of the room with her light and springing tread and Edward
sat down, feeling more shy and yet excited than he had ever before been
in his life. This was the first of many times that he would be in this room
with this family. “It won’t be so hard after this, though,” he thought dog-
gedly and he sat, impervious and silent, under their frank stares. They had
all “dressed,” as Margaret put it, in some fashion for their evening meal.
He had never been here when there was not a party and so he supposed
that this was their habit. Even Thomas Seaton had put on an old black
velvet coat with his tweed trousers. Tom wore a somewhat old-fashioned
tuxedo that did not entirely fit him. Sandra continued her conversation.

“You are so stingy, Papa. You make poor Tom wear your old tux.”

“Shut up, Sandra,” Tom said amiably.

“It’s a good suit of clothes,” Thomas Seaton said. “I’d wear it myself
if I could get into it.”

“But the depression’s over and I don’t see why— ”

516

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“00 be quiet, Saadra,^’ her mother liiteiposed.,“FiB sure we're/all bored.,
with you,”

Silence fell again, 'and Thomas Seaton , leaned over a small table at his
side and poured some -sherry from a crystal decanter'' into a small glass.
“Take this to your new relative,”' he commanded his, daughter.

Edward sprang to his feet. “Fll get it for myself, thank you.” He took
the tiny glass with -strong. feelings of interest and guilt. He had not tasted
wine half a dozen times in his life, andhis mother worked In the temperance
society in Chedbury. Had he believed in it he would have proudly refused
the wine, but he disliked intensely the feverishness of women against liquor,
even though his reason acknowledged that some of them had undoubtedly
endured enough from drunken husbands and empty pay envelopes to justify
their fervor. But his father was a teetotaler, and he resented his mother’s
devotion to a cause so remote from her. He sat down again and sipped his
wine.

“I’m glad to see you like a glass of wine,” Thomas Seaton said. “Not
that what you and I do, and Tom here and a few more like us, will do any
good— we’re in for a period of morality, my boy. I can feel it coming. The
depression scared us to death and we’ll be good for a while.”

“Fm going to learn to smoke, Papa.” Sandra’s confident drawl inter-
rupted his slow hesitating rumbling.

“I don’t care what you do,” Thomas retorted. He was holding his glass
against the firelight, squinting one eye through it. “You and your mamma
can both smoke if it’ll comfort you for getting old.”

They pronounced it Papa and Mamma with the accent on the last sylla-
ble in a fashion that seemed foreign to Edward and yet that he knew was
not affected. They had manners of their own but these were not what had
been taught to him as manners. He sat alert and silent, appreciating the
ease of this family, valuing without knowing why he did the glint on velvet,
the whiteness of Mrs. Seaton’s hands folded on her lap, the faded red of
the long curtains drawn now across the window. Tom’s aquiline profile,
sleepy and smiling, was part of it.

“Margaret’s taking a long time,” Tom said suddenly. He turned to Ed-
ward. “You know, I admire your courage. What’ll I call you— Ed? She’s
laid down the law against Ned. That’s her own private name. We have to
obey her or she has tantrums.”

“She doesn’t have tantrums,” his father said in his slow heavy voice.
“You don’t know what tantrums are, Tom. You should have seen your
mother at Margaret’s age. Screaming and shouting when I didn’t give you
your way, didn’t you, my love? But they get over it.”

Mrs. Seaton smiled and produced two dimples exactly like Margaret’s
in the unflawed smoothness of her cheeks. “I wouldn’t compete with you,
old dear,” she said sweetly. “When I shouted you yelled. It got so tiresome.

I always lost my voice afterward, I remember.”

“You see, Edward,” Thomas Seaton said complacently.

THE EONO LOVE

517

*®T!iey’re lying, botli of tliems” Tom said lazily. “We can’t believe a
word they say. They make themselves out as hellions when they were' our
age.” '■

“Anything we do they always pretend they’ve,, done worse,” Sandra said.
“It makes, us feel so inferior.” '

' Had they laughed Edward would have' joined in their laughter, but they
were mischievously grave and he could only smile with , discomfort They
would take knowing, he told himself.

At this moment Margaret came into the room,, looking, he perceived
at once, beautiful beyond anything he had ever seen. She had put on a pa.le
gold sleeveless gown, very long, that fitted her ' body closely; It was split
up the front tO' a point below her knees and her gold-clad 'legs were visible.
Above the dress her dark head was high and her eyes were sapphire blue
and bright. They were all startled and she enjoyed their amazement. Ed-
ward knew that she was a vision and he hated the way she looked. She
turned around slowly. “I wanted to wear it the first time tonight,” she de-
clared. “When it’s old I shall keep it and remember.”

All of them were looking at her differently. Tom said nothing, but he
lit a cigarette and gazed at her, over the curling smoke. Her mother looked
critical. “I wonder if women will really take to these tight things,” she mur-
mured. “They make such demands on the figure.”

“It’s sweetl” Sandra cried. “Oh, I can’t bear its being so sweet. I want
to tear up this old thing of mine!”

“It’ll make new men of us all,” Thomas declared wickedly.

Tom burst into high laughter and then they all laughed except Edward.
He could manage no more than a smile, being rent in two by Margaret’s
beauty and his own deep distrust of beauty in this shape. When she was his
wife he would forbid her wearing such dresses. “The sooner we’re married
the better,” he thought grimly.

He found his eyes caught suddenly by Mrs. Seaton’s as though she knew
what he was thinking. Then she moved her eyes away quickly. “Come
along, we’re starving,” she declared, and led them behind her toward the
dining room. He and Margaret went last of ah.

“Don’t you like me?” she whispered, her hand warm under his arm.

“I’m not sure I do,” he replied.

“Oh, why not?” she asked.

“You’re too beautiful,” he said and was glad there was time for no more
talk.

The evening was over. He was surprised that it had proved so short, in
spite of bis fears during dinner that it would be long. The family had
talked exactly as though he were not present, throwing him a careless
handful of words, a reference he could not understand, with smiles always
warm and pleasing. They had talked about everything from the grocer’s
amazing profile to what Thomas Edison had just said about the new flying

518

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

machines. For the first time in his life he heard the word helicopter, al-
though Tom used it 'as though it were a household utensil. Thomas Seaton
paused for a few minutes in his enjoyment of the stuffed leg of Iamb, to
express his scorn of WMam Jennings Bryan.

' t^You’ve never even seen him,” his wife said.

- ‘TVe 'read enough of his sentimental mouthings,” he. retorted, “and any
man who wears his hair long is sure to be unsound.”

In, the midst of talk that seemed disconnected but was connected, as he
perceived, by unseen waves of communication, Edward caught Margaret
looking often and thoughtfully at him. He looked back at her, fully aware
that some time before they parted this night he would learn what these
looks meant. He braced himself somewhat, determined that he would not
yield his honest opinion and from that instant began to enjoy the really
excellent food.

After dinner everybody had coffee in small cups except Thomas Seaton
who parted his short thick beard with his fingers and supped his creamed
and sweetened coffee with loud pleasure from a large cup. There was a
little desultory talk, then Sandra drifted away and Tom announced that
he was going to “see a girl,” Mrs. Seaton went gently to sleep, and Thomas
picked up the newspaper.

Margaret motioned to Edward. “Come into the garden, Ned.”

“ni fetch your coat”

“It’s warm as anything,” she objected.

“Where is your coat?” he asked stubbornly when they were in the hall
and waited until suddenly she laughed and opened the coat closet and took
out her old blue coat.

In the garden, sitting on an iron seat that felt hard and cold through his
clothes, she threw the coat back. The moonlight fell on her bare smooth
arms and shoulders.

“I shouldn’t have worn this dress,” she said. “It was silly, perhaps. No,
it wasn’t— feeling as I do about tonight.”

“I shan’t like you wearing it before other men,” he said.

She turned her startled face toward him. “You think it’s not modest?”

“I know it’s not,” he returned.

She smiled, but not quite enough to bring the dimples. “Now, Ned, how
do you know?” she asked warmly. “What makes you feel it’s immodest?”

He was shocked by this and made no pretense of biding his feelings. “I
don’t think you should even ask.”

“You mean I mustn’t ask you how you feel when a woman is immodestly
dressed?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “It’s not fitting.”

She considered this. Then suddenly she put the coat on again. “Are you
ashamed of the way you feel?” she inquired. Her eyes, wide and curious,
were fixed on his face and he could not down his quick flush.

“Margaret, I don’t like this talk,” he said firmly. He wished that she

THE LONG LOVE

519 .

would not look, at Mm as she was noW' doing. There was something pro-
Yocative, teasing, .. amusedj something alm,ost wicked in her persistent gaze.
He wanted to punish, her, to restore her to what he felt was proper decency.
He was afraid of her when she was like this, and he proceeded to choose
Ms weapons. 'Tt makes me'think of what' my mother said last. night/' he
began. ..

“Ah, you told your mother last night!” she cried.

“I was going to tell you.”

“But you didn't tel! me, Ned, and I did tell you.”

“We got talking about the ring,”

“What did she say last night?” she demanded.

He considered. “I won’t tell you,” he said at last “You won’t forget .it,”

“Will you tell me if I tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“What my mother said last night— when I told her,”

He considered again. Curiosity overwhelmed him. No, it was more than
curiosity— it was necessity. He ought to know what her mother thought of
him, indeed, he must know in order that he might stait fair and square.

“What did she say?” he asked abruptly.

“Wm you tell me?”

“I suppose so.”

Margaret withdrew a little and composed herself to speak in a clear
distinct voice. “She said, ‘How will you manage when he doesn’t laugh at
your jokes?’” She looked at Mm with frank eyes, in which there was a
touch of pity,

“Is that all?” he asked.

She was astonished. “Do you want anything worse?” she demanded.

“I don’t think that’s so bad,” he said.

“Oh, dear.” She covered her face with both hands. “Oh, dear, oh, dear,”
she murmured under her breath. She took her hands away again. “Ned, I
can’t marry you!”

He was frightened by the gravity of her look and he humbled himself.
“I don’t t hink what either of our mothers says matters,” he said stoutly.
“My mother said you’d be a bad housekeeper and even that maybe some-
day you’d talk about divorce. But what does she know?”

“But of course I’m a bad housekeeper,” Margaret declared, “and I
don’t doubt sometimes I’U want to be divorced.”

“Margaret!” he cried wildly.

“All married people do,” she went on, “and the only difference is that
the ones who really love each other tell each other everything and the
others don’t dare to.”

He was stupefied by this, and he was as still as the stone boy in the
fountain behind them.

“Oh!” Margaret cried. “But you mustn’t let me go, of course— never-
never— whatever I say.”

■ 520 ;

■AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

, She flHBg herself Into Ms arms and he held her hard and all. his courage
and stubbornness came hooding back into him. His head was whirling but
Ms;;he^ : was calm,

■;■ don’t' understand you,” he said between set teeth, “I never know what
to ' expect 1 suppose I never will. But whatever it is you are-I shan’t let
you go— ever!”'

„ He, put his face Into the soft curves of her neck, where her hair curled
upward, and he was half suffocated with his love.

'^Oh!”' Margaret sighed, after a long time. "Fm perfectly happy, Ned-
even though I know m often make you miserable. Please, Ned, forgive
me for ever^^thing that’s going to happen?”

‘^Fil forgive you everything,” he muttered, and was terrified by Ms
weakness.

The prospects of marriage deepened the acquisitive instincts in Edward
Haslatt. These were already strong, for he was of a nature that drew to
himself what he wanted, and what he had he held. Any impulse to share
was secondary and acquired, implanted only by his sense of justice.

Now that Margaret had promised to marry him he became obsessed
with the necessity for a home and the means to maintain it. Had his father’s
business been one that he disliked or thought unsound he would have de-
serted it in search of something better. But he liked printing. Even as a boy
he had enjoyed visiting the shop and after school and in the long vacations,
he had besought his father for the lowly positions of errand boy and later
of printer’s devil Until his father had become a partner, however, these
had been steadily refused, lest Mather or Loomis imagine that he, Mark
Haslatt, was trying to get his son into the business. When Loomis died
his father had still feared old Robert Mather, and not until Edward’s last
year of college had he allowed him to come freely into the shop to help
with the presses. He had been gratified to discover how much his son al-
ready knew about type and was only troubled lest Edward might want new
and rare types that could not be used often enough to justify the expense.

'Tor what we do here now, old-fashioned Scotch type is about all we
need,” he told Edward. ‘‘Of course we have a few special types to please
fussy customers, and for wedding announcements and such. You can tie
up a lot of money in type that you don’t use once in ten years.”

Edward had listened respectfully to such advice for as long as he could
remember. Now, however, with the promise of being allowed to print a
book or two, he pondered it afresh. He genuinely loved books and the
prospect of building up, very slowly, of course, what might some day grow
into a real publishing house excited him in a measure only second to his
marriage. Yet whatever rashness he held in his nature was completely
quelled by the necessity of supporting a wife and the children he wanted
and expected. His salary concerned Mm constantly and he urged his father

THE LONG LOVE

to consult Mr. Mather at the first possible moment, so that he and Margaret
would know what they were to live on. His father was pessimistic. ,

'*^Bob . Mather m so old he ■ doesn’t know why anybody needs much to
live on,” he told Edward' one evening. They were in the sitting room and
Edward was at home only because Margaret and her mother had gone
to New York to buy her trousseau. Secretly Edward had not approved of ■
this. After they were married he would not be able to afford New York
clothes and Margaret would have to do with the Chedbury dressmaker.
But he did not tell her this, since her father was still paying her bills.

His father, in his shirt sleeves, was sitting in an old Morris chair beside
the stove and in other days Edward might also have been without his coat.
The permeating influence' of Harvard, however, and now of the Seatons
compelled him to other ways, even in the home sitting room, and he was
encouraged by his mother, who thought it was ‘‘nice” of him,

“Fll want two thousand dollars a year,” Edward argued.

“Old Mather won’t see why,” he replied, without lifting his eyes from
the newspaper.

“Then I shall look for a job somewhere else,” Edward said.

“Well, rii do what I can,” his father replied. He appeared absorbed in
his paper.

“When win you, Father?” Edward urged. He was fidgeting over the
rack of magazines at the end of the sofa. The slowness of time was in-
tolerable. Margaret had set the wedding for Christmas Eve—a bad time,
he thought, for it would be ail mixed up with Christmas. But she had per-
sisted, declaring that it would be wonderful to wake up on Christmas morn-
ing married. “Fve always loved Christmas,” she declared, “and now it’ll be
wonderful.” He felt beset with the problems as well as the joys of marriage.

“Hm?” his father asked vaguely. “Well, maybe tomorrow. I have to
take some papers up to him anyway.”

Robert Mather was too old to come to the office now but every new
job had to be laid before him, with full estimates of what it would cost.
He examined the figures through his small, sharply focused spectacles and
decided whether the job was worth doing. Edward knew his father dreaded
these visits to the bedridden old man, but he performed them as his duty,
never forgetting that half the business still belonged to Mather.

“Would it be unwise to put the matter of my salary to him at the same
time that you are submitting estimates?” he suggested.

His father rubbed his head meditatively. “Well, Fii judge,” he said at
last. “If Mather’s in a good mood, it might be as well to put it to him. If
he ain’t—FIl see.”

He went back to his paper and then a moment later put it down. “Have
you thought any of living with one side or the other? I don’t know how
your mother and Margaret would get along— nor yet how you would do
up there. But as far as Fm concerned, if Margaret would do her share in
the house—”

522

AMERICAN^ TRIPTYCH'

“We both feel we must set up our own home/’ Edward said positively.

“Maybe it’s best,” his father agreed mildly. This time ■ his attention to'
his paper was permanent, and the minutes dragged until bedtime.

Chedbury still being empty of Margaret, Edward spent the next morning
at the shop, drawing up the estimates on^ a pamphlet that advertised a life
insurance firm. He paused to ponder the matter of life insurance. What
if he should die? True, he was young and' very healthy, yet completely'
healthy men could drown or, could break their necks in , astonishingly sim-
ple ways. He made up his mind that old Mather must agree to ^ two thou-
sand dollars or he would leave Chedbury and go to Boston or even to New
York.

By evening when bis father came home there was no such clear-cut
decision offered for him to accept or refuse.

“Weil, old Mather said he wouldn’t approve more than eighteen hun-
dred the first year, son—but if you worked out good, he’d see about the
two hundred extra after that.”

“The old skinflint!” Edward spluttered. “I’ve a good mind to throw it
an up.”

“I know how you feel,” his father said, “but there’s a lot of things to
consider. Old Mather isn’t going to last forever. In fact, he looked bad
today. I should be surprised if he lasted out another year.”

Edward was silent while prudence worked in him. Chedbury was in a
good geographical position, near enough to several big cities to solicit
business and yet far enough away to keep overhead costs low. To move
elsewhere now would mean extra expense, in addition to uncertainty.
Young men fresh from Harvard were no rarity on the market. “Is there
any chance of buying Mather out?” he inquired.

His father grinned. “I’ve been dreaming of that for the last ten years.
But I’d need twenty thousand dollars— of which I have five at present.”

Then his father sighed and went upstairs with lagging steps, and his
mother put her head in the door to announce that she needed more wood
for the kitchen stove, Edward rose and went out into the woodshed at the
back of the house. It was sunset and the luminous quiet sky spread over
the town. His fretfulaess faded. Under this sky his beloved was speeding
homeward to him. He was meeting her at half past nine, and there was
nothing else In the day now except that he would see her. He filled the
woodbox with energy, fed his brother’s hound dog, and ate a large supper
in rising spirits. When he let himself out of the house at nine o’clock his
courage was high. The train was fifteen minutes late and at quarter to ten
he had Margaret’s hands in his and only Mrs. Seaton’s imperious cries
that there were seven boxes kept him from taking her in his arms. The
train stopped three minutes at Chedbury, being bound for larger places,
and he dashed into the car to collect the boxes, surprised, in the midst
of all his haste, that Margaret had been so extravagant as to take a Pull-
man, in spite of its being only a day journey to New York.

THE LONG LOVE

523 .

: .Biittoniglit he. was disposed to criticize.' her for nothing. They sat side
by side .in the Seaton carriage, their hands clasped under the robe, while
Mrs, Seaton described the unutterable difficulties of shopping in Mew York.
.Once at home she declared herself exhausted and went d.!rectly upstairs
to bed, whither Thomas .Seaton had already gone, and Margaret pulled,
Edward by the hand into the parlor and there behind closed doors .they,
ended their &st separation. She iung herself into Ms .arms and he held
her to' his heart.

‘^Oh,” she breathed at last, *‘ifs' terrible being so in love that It makes
you miserable!**

She laughed, freed herself from his arms, and shook her skirts. Then
she dropped upon the couch. ‘‘Did you miss me?** she demanded.

“Every moment,** he replied, sitting down beside her.

“I would have missed you if there’d been a second to do it in,** she
declared frankly. “Oh, Ned, when you see .my wedding dress!**

She closed her eyes in ecstasy and clasped her hands behind her head,

“Tell me,** he begged, his eyes upon the lovely line of her throat.

“I cant,** she answered. “It’s to be a cloud of lace. I’m wearing Mother’s
veil, of course, and she’s going to let me have her pearl neckiace. I love
being married!**

“It’s more than the wedding—** he began but she stopped him.

“Don’t tell me!” she cried. “I want to enjoy every moment of it as it
comes. Just now I’m only thinking of the wedding. When I’m through that
I’ll think about what comes next and next and next**

She flouted his sober look and then repented and laid her head on his
shoulder. “What did you really think about while I was gone?** she de-
manded.''

He put his arm about her, feeling patient and much older than she,
“About money mostly,** he replied.

“Why money?** she inquired dreamily,

“Because we want our own house to live in, and we want to buy our
own bread—”

“And butter,” she went on, “and jam.”

He broke in on this. “Father asked old Mather how much salary I could
have and he said eighteen hundred the first year and two thousand after-
ward— if everything went right”

“That’s plenty,” she said still dreamily. “I have a lot of clothes,”

“It isn’t plenty,” he retorted. “I wish to God I could buy the old devil
out!”

“Why don’t you?” she inquired, and she lifted her forefinger and fol-
lowed the line of his profile. “You have such a nice nose,” she murmured,
“and your mouth, sir, is handsome.”

He ignored this although he heard it with pleasure. “It would take twenty
thousand dollars,” he said.

524

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

She sat up and stared at him. ‘*Did yoe ^kiiow I 'have tw^^
dollars of my own? . . . Don’t look so shocked— it’s true.^'V

“That has nothing to do with me,” he said stiffly. In his heart he had
often feared that she had money and would' not be wholly ' dependent upon

him.

“My grandmamma left it to me, because I was' named for her. She
left Tom five thousand which he has spent, and Sandra has five thousand
which she hasn’t spent, because she hasn’t got it yet And I haven’t spent
mine for the same reason— but I’m to have it the day I marry. That was in
Grandmamma’s will”

This horrifying information she gave him without the slightest percep-
tion of how he would feel when he heard it. He determined instantly that
he would never touch any of her money.

“I shall give the money straight to you and you can buy off Mr. Mather,
and ril make my father give you the rest,” she went on.

“No!” he exclaimed, stung at last to speech. “I’d never get over the
shame.”

She sat upright. “What shame?” she demanded.

“I shall support you myself,” he announced.

“Why, of course,” she agreed, her blue eyes wide and sparkling, “but
I want to put my money into our business. And Papa won’t mind.”

He got to his feet and began to walk up and down the floor, and then
he paused before her. “Margaret, if you ask your father for one cent’s
help for me rii-ni-”

“Break the engagement?” she inquired with bright curiosity.

He looked down into the enchanting face. “No,” he groaned.

, “Then I will do it for you,” she declared pretending to pout.

“Please, Margaret,” he begged. “Don’t tease me.”

“Then promise me to take my money,” she said.

Cold sweat broke across his forehead. “Don’t, darling, please!”

“I was going to buy you something out of the money anyway,” she said
remorselessly. “Some pearl studs or maybe one of those new motor cars—
or a yellow diamond ring for your little finger.”

“Now Margaret,” he exclaimed, “what would I do with any of those
things?”

“So why not take the money and make it work for you— and me, too?”
she retorted.

He stood, impressed against his will by this argument, and she pursued
ruthlessly her slight advantage. “Don’t you see, Fii still be dependent on
you,” she urged. “If you don’t do your work well, we’ll be ruined. Doesn’t
that satisfy you, Ned?”

“You’ve mixed me all up,” he complained.

“Oh, you’re so proud!” she cried. “I want you to support me, Ned. I
don’t want my own money. FII keep thinking all the time how I could buy a
ticket to Europe— when I’m angry with you. Of course I’ll often be angry,

THE LONO XOVE 525:

Ned, and so will you, and IfH be a mercy 'if all the money we have is tied
.up , so we can’t get it”

■ The end of all this impetooos: talk, this soft pleading, 'reinforced by her
.arms., around , his neck and her clinging body,- was. to destroy him so .co.nS’*
pletely that he agreed to take the money,, which however should be kept
in her name, and the stocks it bought held in her name. He would not
take' money -from her father, but he would ask his own father to put .in his
five thousand, and maybe somewhere they could borrow or scrape together
the three thousand more.

■ Margaret flung herself on the sofa in exhaustion, *'0,h, -thank God, it’s
settled!” she sighed. “But if you’re always going to be so- hard to convince,
Ned, I’ll not live long.” ■

He ignored this and presented her with the next problem. “Where shall
we live, Margaret? Not with your parents or mine, anyway.”

To his surprise it appeared that she already knew where they were to
live. “I know— we’ll rent the old Holcombe house. It’s been empty ever
since I first saw it and picked it out.”

“Margaret, have pity on me,” he begged.

She opened her eyes at him. “But it is a lovely house, and all that land
around it—”

“It’s half a mile from town,” he objected.

Everybody in Chedbury knew the Holcombe house and Sunday schools
had picnicked for years on the neglected grounds. Old Mrs. Holcombe
had been bom and had died there when Edward and Margaret were chil-
dren and her husband had gone away to finish his days in England. Stanley
Holcombe had been a don at Oxford when his wife had brought him here to
write the many books he had always wanted to write. Strange to say, he
had written several of them, and Edward wondered now if his first im-
pulse toward books had not come from the tail delicate-faced Englishman.
He had seen him sometimes in the shop, whither Mr. Holcombe came to
consult about paper and types and bindings. Twice he had tried to per-
suade Mr. Loomis to undertake a private printing, but Mr. Loomis had
been afraid of it.

“That house will cost much more than we can afford,” Edward objected,

“No, it won’t,” Margaret contradicted him in a fierce whisper. “You’ll
see!”

When he shook his head and looked doubtful she declared willfully,
“Anyway, that is where I am going to live after I am married, and it
would be nicer if you’d live with me.” Then she sighed. “Fm fearfully
tired, Ned. Please go home.” She rose and tugged at him until he was on
his feet. “Good night, Ned. I do love you.”

She kissed him once, a long soft pressure of her lips upon his, and then
slipped out of the room and left him there. He stood a moment listening
to the clip-clap of her heels on the stairs and realized that she was not
coming back and that there was nothing for him except to go home.

526

AMEMCAK TRIPTYCH

Walking along alone throiigh the sharp nigM Mr Me considered again
the matter of her money. He still disliked the thought of it, but his con-
science was consoled somewhat by the fact that it would still be hers.
When he let himself into the house, through the open door of the sitting
room he saw his father at the dining-room table, a paper shade over Ms
eyes, working at sheets of paper. He went in surprised, and his father
looked up at him with a faint smile, ‘'Your mother’s gone to bed, but Fve
been figuring all day how I could buy old Mather out* There’s no way,
unless I mortgage the house, and I’ve always told your mother I wouldn’t
do that, come whatever.”

What he had not been willing to do for his own sake he was now sud-
denly happy that he could do for his father’s. “Fve been talking to Marga-
ret,” he said. He sat down and pulled the sheets of figures toward him.
“Seems she’s going to get twelve thousand dollars the day we’re married—
by her grandmother’s will. I didn’t know it until today. She wants to put
it in the business.”

His father sat back and pushed up the shade, “Well,” he breathed, “well,
now!”

“I didn’t want her to do it at first. You know how Fd feel,” Edward
went on.

His father’s face fell. “Of course not,” he said slowly.

“But she insisted. You know how the Seatons are— she’s a Seaton, if
there ever was one— and so I told her Fd only consent if she kept it in her
own name and we’d give her stock in exchange,” Edward said.

His father’s face lit again. “That we could do,” he exclaimed.

“Still it won’t be enough,” Edward said.

They looked at each other. “I wouldn’t mortgage the house,” his father
said softly, “but I could borrow.”

“I don’t own a thing,” Edward si^ed.

“Should I tell your mother?” his father asked. The inquiry was directed
to his own conscience, as Edward knew, and he did not answer it. “Funny
how women have to be so sure of a roof and a bed,” his father mused.
“I reckon it’s because they feel helpless.”

They sat silent again. Suddenly his father shuffied the papers together.
“I won’t tell. Fil just do it. We’ll get it paid back before she knows it”

“All right, Father,” Edward said.

He watched his father’s absorbed face. Small lines disappeared, and the
pursed lips loosened into a smile. His father looked up. “It looks like one
of my dreams, anyway, wili come true,” he said shyly.

He spent the next months waiting for his wedding day and in two frames
of mind. There were hours when he was convinced that Christmas Eve
would never come, so intolerably did the dawns rise and the twilights fall,
and other hours when he felt the day was rushing upon him with sometMng
like doom. He was much disturbed by this variance in himself, but it did

THE . LONG LOVE

not occur to him , to tell , anyone of it. Was there in him somewhere a real
reluctance to marriage and if so, could it possibly mean a lack of male
vitality? This was a horrifying thought and it made him moody and with-
drawn, although he went as usual every evening to. see Margaret. As the
autumn days had changed to frost and then to cold, their picn,ics and walks
had become hours before the fire in the library, where, after a brief half
hour or so of desultory talk with a Seaton or two, they were left alone
until eleven o’clock, an hour that Edward had arbitrarily set for going
ho,me. ■

Usually these evenings sped by, ■ for Margaret had samples of carpets and
curtains and they discussed the placing of furniture in the rooms of Hol-
combe’s old house, which was now being repaired. The house and its
changes were Thomas’s wedding present to his daughter and Margaret
took passionate delight in every detail. With a wisdom whose depth Ed-
ward did not at first divine she had announced that she would not buy a
stick of furniture or a yard of carpet, or so much as a sofa pillow without
Edward’s cooperation and approval.

“Our house is as much your home as mine,” she told him.

He was accustomed to his mother’s complete power over the house and
this new responsibility pleased him and at the same time frightened him.
He knew nothing of house furnishing, and his ignorance and Margaret’s
decisive tastes might very well provide more cause for quarrel than for
cooperation.

In one of his darker moods therefore he surveyed one evening samples
of stair carpet that she had waiting on the table.

“The real problem is whether we want the blue or the rusty rose,”
Margaret said.

“Why not this brown?” he inquired gloomily.

He picked a small square of a dun shade that was almost the color of
dust.

“You don’t feel well tonight, Ned,” Margaret said,

“I’m all right,” he replied.

Her penetrating blue eyes did not give him up. “Something Is wrong,”
she declared.

He shook his head.

She went on remorselessly. “You get this way every week or so. And
I have to guess what it is.”

He sat down and lit his new pipe. He bad never smoked regularly be-
fore, but Thomas had advised him to take up pipe smoking before mar-
riage. “It’s a wonderful help,” Thomas had said, his eyes laughing under
his brushy red brows. “If you have your pipe in your mouth you can’t
answer right ofi.”

“I know because I feel the same way,” Margaret said, her eyes still
on his face. He met them and maintained his silence and she continued

528

AMERICAN. TRIPTYCH

the one-sided conversation. ‘‘Sometimes I just don’t want to get married,
either.”

■ ; His heart ' congeak^ of reluctance fied -and he cried ont,

“Margaret, what are yon saying?”

“Not that I don’t want to marry you, Ned—jnst that sometimes I feel
queer about getting married, now that I really am going to do it.”

He took the pipe out of bis mouth. “You’re sure you will?”

“It’s in the abstract, yet-oh, Ned, you mustn’t fill your pipe so full,
darling!”

A coal of tobacco had fallen upon his coat and she flew to brush it off
and examine the damage. A slight brown stain clung to the gray cloth.
“Dad fills it only a little over half full.”

She took the pipe from his hand and knocked it slightly upon the hearth-
stone, and he felt siHy. But she was unself-conscious as she put it back in
his mouth.

“You smoke and let me talk a bit,” she said briskly. “That’s why Dad
smokes, you know— so Mother can talk and he needn’t answer.”

He spluttered at this. “Now Margaret, how do you know that?” he
demanded.

She laughed. “Oh, I know his tricks,” she exclaimed. She seated herself
on his knee and pulled gently at the lobe of his ear. “Of course I can only
guess how you feel, Ned~but here’s my guess. We want to get married—
we want to marry each other— but when we think about starting off alone
in the house, having only each other and being dependent just on each
other, well—”

She looked so grave that again he felt frightened. He put down his pipe
on the small table beside him and drew her to him. “Don’t you dare feel
so,” he commanded. “Else I’ll take you to the justice of the peace and we
won’t wait for the wedding day.”

“Isn’t it the way you feel?” she insisted.

“I reckon,” he said reluctantly. Where would he ever hide his sou! if
she could so divine it?

“There’s only one cure for feeling afraid of each other,” she said and
her cheek was against his breast.

“Time,” he suggested.

“No, this,” she replied.

He held her close then, and they were silent and he felt the rightness of
what she had said. To come closer was the answer. He must remember
never to yield to remoteness. When he felt far then he must force himself
to come near, and in the nearness distance would be no more. It would
take an effort of will, even though he loved her so dearly.

“Two must grow used to being one,” she murmured upon his breast.

“Yes,” he agreed, and then felt the monosyllable too brief. He made an
effort. “You’ll have to teach me to say things. I live so much in silence,”

THE LONG LOVE

529

,.She replied, 'I’ll .ask you what, you are think!, Dg when I; want to know,,
and .you must tell ■

She fell silent then, and when he looked down upon her face he saw her
gazing .into the fire, her eyes steady. She was strongly built, not too thin,
but she was so soft, her frame so pliable, that she fitted every curve of his
body, and when he held her like this she seemed small and light. His dark
mood was gone and he felt only unutterable tenderness. Passion was some-
where waiting but he , kept it there. This was only the approach to marriage.

Suddenly, carelessly, the .weeks began to gallop, and then he realized
that there were no more of them. It became a matter of days, then hours
and each hour was no longer than a minute. The two fam.ilies swung into
tense action. Clothes, flowers, food, invitations, the formalities of brides-
maids and best man and parties left him scarcely time to think even of
Margaret. Their life together was postponed. At night, when they were
alone for a little while they clung together without speaking. "Let me be
tired, Ned,” Margaret begged. "I have to keep up before everybody else.”

"You needn’t keep up before me—ever,” he said.

"Oh, blessed!” she sighed, "That’s why I love you.”

He had asked Baynes to be his best man, and then fearful lest a younger
brother take such responsibility too lightly, he asked Tom Seaton to keep
an eye on him and see that he did his duty, Tom, growing fond of young
Baynes, exerted himself unusually and a comradeship sprang up between
them. Yet it was Baynes who did duty on the night before the wedding. Tom
had let himself get drunk at the bachelors’ dinner, and Baynes volunteered
to be the one to take him home and put him to bed in the slumbering
Seaton house.

"You go to bed,” Baynes had muttered to Edward. His gray eyes crin-
kled. "You need your sleep, old man.” So Edward had helped them into a
hired cab and let them go.

But Margaret heard the front door open and she came to the stairs, her
hair down on her shoulders and a blue kimono wrapped around her. When
she saw Tom she ran down the steps, her bare feet noiseless,

“Oh, Tom!” she whispered. "You would— yon miserable sinner!”

Tom smiled without opening his eyes or making a sound. He swayed
back and forth on his feet and Baynes caught him.

"I don’t believe he’s going to walk up the stairs,” Baynes whispered.
Without being told he knew that this must be conducted in silence.

"He will, too,” Margaret retorted.

With expertness she lifted Tom’s hand and bit his thumb and at the same
instant clapped her hand over his mouth. Above her head Tom’s eyes
opened reproachfully.

"Hayfoot-strawfoot,” she commanded.

He moved his feet sluggishly and she wound his arm around her
shoulder.

"Get under his other arm,” she whispered to Baynes.

530

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH'

He obeyed and together- they moved up the stairs and into Tom’s bed-
room. They went to the bed and he dropped upon it. Baynes took off
his shoes, and Margaret drew a cover. Tom was already asleep, and they
tiptoed from the room.

Outside the door they paused.

‘‘Does he do this very often?” Baynes asked softly.

“Whenever he has the slightest excuse,” she said under her breath.

Baynes hesitated, looking down on her with some shyness. He was tall
and thin, and in the dim light he looked young and tired. “You go back
home as fast as you can,” she whispered. “There’ll be a lot for you to do
tomorrow.”

He still hesitated. “What’ll I call you?” he inquired.

“Cali me?” she repeated.

He went on. “I’ve always been just a kid to you and Edward— I’ll have
to call you something now.”

“Are you glad?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered. Although he had seldom spoken to her in all the
years he had known her, he liked her and felt a strange tingling sense of
nearness to her— she was going to be his brother’s wife!

“Cali me Maggie,” she suggested.

“But is that what Edward calls you?” he asked.

“Nobody calls me Maggie. It can be your special name for me,” sbe
replied.

He considered this uncertainly. “Will Edward mind?”

“I like him to call me Margaret,” she replied. “It seems to suit him.”

He had no notion of what she meant by this, but he accepted it. “All
right— Maggie.”

“And don’t tell anybody about Tom,” she said.

“I won’t,” he promised. “But Ed knows, of course.”

“Does he?” She paused, tihen she said, “Sometime I’ll tell you why he
gets drunk.”

“Is there a reason?” he asked in surprise.

“There’s always a reason,” she said decisively. “Now go home— do!”

He walked home through the cold December air, and let hknself into
the house. There was neither sound nor light and he stole upstairs to his
own room, undressed, and crawled into his cold bed, worrying lest to-
morrow Tom could not help Mm out.

On the other side of the wail Edward lay motionless and awake. What
did men think about the night before they were married? It depended, he
supposed, upon what sort of men they were. He supposed that for some
men it was a night of impatient waiting for physical fulfillment. He had
heard of men who could not wait, and who went to a brothel. In the talk
of boys together in college there had even been advice that this was a good
thing to do, because it kept a man from being too urgent. A woman was
always afraid on her wedding night— if she was a virgin, that is. He had

THE JLON0 LOVE

:lieard.SHch talk'/wIthoBt .seemi^^ to Ilste0,'bemg shy aBd fastidious. Now
lie knew that he had listened, for here it all was in his mmd. He had
thought it. filthy talk then and it seemed even more filthy now. He wanted
.fulfillment, of course-hot not at al costs. He wanted the fulfilimeat ^of
' Wholeness,, hot what that was he could not comprehend, except that it
was more, than physical.

■ Lying alone in his room for this last night of Ms solitary life, he was
aware\of a profound satisfaction that he, too, would go to his marriage a
virgin. There would be nothing to tell Margaret tomorrow night— nothing
at al. Had there been episodes in his past, he would have been wretched
had he not told ' her. His fearful honesty would have co'inpeiled him. He
had kissed' a few girls— two, to be exact— but the memory of their faces,
their lips, were now disgusting to him. He groaned and turned on his side.
The folly of the young! Thank God it had carried him no further. That
was because he had so early loved Margaret, He sighed, and her face
swam out of the darkness. He would take every hour as it came, aU the
hours ahead, the days, the years. His mind ran down those years and he
saw himself and Margaret— children, too, but he could not see their faces.
There would be plenty of room in that big house. He supposed that he’d
get as used to the Holcombe house as he was to this room. It would cease
to be the Holcombe house, it would become Ms, The spigot of the bath-
room leaked— but they were lucky to have a bathroom— most old houses
didn’t. Mr. Holcombe was English and that was why. He must remember
to fix the spigot. He fell asleep at last.

His wedding day was sunny— that he made sure of when he sprang out of
bed. Sunshine and blue sky above snow! The gray sky had opened and a
steady quiet rain at dusk had changed to snow during the night and the
clouds had cleared. He stood at the open window for a moment, breathing
in the crisp cold air, and his spirits soared. What had he been afraid of
yesterday or any other day? This was the day of his heart’s desire, the
dream day of his life. Religion was the social custom of church going and
the stereotyped prayers of his childhood long since left off, but at this
moment he fell to his knees beside Ms bed and prayed speechlessly that
God would help him to be a good man and good husband for his beloved.
It was only for a moment and he was on his feet again, half ashamed. But
the impulse had done him good. He did not often let himself act upon
impulse.

Now, feeling unusually free, he prepared himself for his wedding day.
There was plenty to do. He had slept later than his habit, and his mother
had not called him. When he had eaten Ms breakfast he must go to the
church for rehearsal, and by the time that was over, it would be noon.
Margaret was to sleep for two hours this afternoon— that Mrs. Seaton had
told him firmly— and he would go to the shop and work out those two hours
as the easiest way to rid Mmself of them. Then it would be time to bathe

532

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

and dress and see that the last .things were packed into his: new pigskin; hag,
which had been his wedding gift from his father and mother, not your
Christmas gift, mind,” his mother had taken care to say.

So engrossed was he in his own day that he had' not thought of what
it would mean to his family, and he was surprised to see them all in the
dining room waiting for breakfast with him. He saw when he opened the
door that they were even in their second-best clothes. His father was read-
ing the paper, his mother was watering the plants on the window sill,
Baynes was whistling the canary into a frenzy, and Louise stood watching.
She was always happier when Baynes was at home. Seeing that plain some-
what patient young face, Edward felt a stab of remorse that he so often
forgot his sister.

‘‘Weil, young man,” his father said mildly. He looked over Ms spec-
tacles.

“I didn’t expect to see everybody,” Edward said. He felt shy and awk-
ward, hating to be the center of attention.

“It’s the last morning,” Ms mother said gently.

The last morning? This, which was all but the first morning for him,
was for her the last. For one brief instant he had a dim perception of
what time meant to a human life, and he could not answer her. His father
answered for Mm. “Come now, Mother-don’t gloom, my dear. We want
him to be as happy as we’ve been, don’t we?” He rose, snapped his news-
paper together, and took Ms place at the head of the table.

“Great day in the morning,” Baynes murmured.

They sat down and the family breakfast began in silence. Edward looked
up and found Louise’s eyes fixed on him. She looked away when Ms eyes
met hers.

“Your dress all ready, Louzey?” he asked. The affectionate name of
their childhood came unexpectedly from Ms tongue. She flushed and
nodded.

“I didn’t think she’d look well in that rose-colored taffeta but she does,”
his mother said.

“Good,” he said heartily. He glanced at Ms brother. “I gave the ring to
Tom, Baynes, but when the moment comes I want you to hand it to me.
I’ll show you this morning.”

“I’ll be there,” Baynes said. Whether Tom could be was another matter.

The comfortable hearty breakfast went on. The canary fluttered its
wings and sang furiously and sunshine fell across the table. The big base-
burner in the hall warmed the room. His mother had made mufiSns and
opened a jar of strawberry jam, and Edward ate with appetite. The coffee
was good, the cream thick, and the dish of scrambled eggs and bacon was
what he liked best, upon a foundation of oatmeal.

“Well, my boy,” Ms father said after a long silence. “I suppose you
won’t get down to the shop.”

“I thought Fd come down for a while this afternoon,” Edward replied.

THE LONG LOVE

■533

liave to! .Let’s,. see-youl! be away two. weeks,” bis father went o,a,

'It’ll be queer to think of yon at the seashore,” Ms mother said
■ "Can you really ,. go . in swimming?” Louise asked in a dreamy voice..
, .“How queer-when well be having Christmas!”

, ' “Hey,” Edward cried out. “What about the Christmas tree?” .He had
forgotten it altogether.

“Well decorate it tonight, after you’ve gone,” his mother answered.
“It’ll give us something to do.”- ' ■

She had planned it all, he saw. He was touched that they wouM. .mks
him, and wondered if it were disloyal to Margaret that he should , fee!
now a pang of vague homesickness because he would not be here tO'ft.lght
to help decorate the tree. Lest his mother -discern Ms heart , he answered,
only Louise.

“Margaret says it’ll be that warm.” They were going south to New
Orleans. It was Margaret’s choice and he had been staggered by the dis-
tance and the cost

“I’d like New Orleans well enough,” he had replied to this, “but Fd
rather go somewhere near enough so that my money will carry us there
and back.”

“Oh, hush,” she had retorted to this. “It’s my honeymoon as much as
it’s yours. I’ll pay my half.”

But he had refused such compromise. They were going, but only as he
could pay for it. That is, they were going by day coach and they had
rooms at a boarding house instead of a big hotel.

“I like little clean boarding houses,” Margaret had said quickly. “Big
hotels are always stuffy.”

She had no foolish pride,

“Margaret, behave yourself!” Mrs. Seaton implored. They were re-
hearsing in the church, decorated for Christmas, and Margaret was wOlful
and teasing and so beautiful that none of them could keep their eyes off
her. Edward was bemused with her. He wanted to shake her for her
naughtiness and with difficulty he kept from kissing her. He caught Baynes
looking at her with infatuation and that sobered him.

“Come,” he said with sudden sternness. “Let’s get it right.”

She quieted at the sound of his voice and went through the ceremony,
obeying Dr. Hart, the minister, with an airy demureness. Sandra was pa-
tient, Tom was nowhere to be seen, and Baynes had got the ring from
him somehow and managed without dropping it.

“Whom God hath brought together let no man . . . et cetera,” Dr.
Hart finished hastily. “I think that is about all. The rest is familiar. Just
pause a moment, Edward, before slipping on the ring. Give me two seconds
to round off my phrases.”

Baynes put out Ms hand for the ring.

“I’ll keep it now,” Edward said.

534

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘‘Don't forget to give it to me, then,” Baynes replied, slightly hurt that
he was not trusted.

Dr, Hart listened to this, his eyes amused. He had christened these young
people, had later received them into the church, and now they were taking
their own part in the eternal pattern of birth and life and death. He bowed
his head and walked softly away. Since the manse adjoined the church, he
had kept on his carpet slippers and no one noticed his going.

If Edward , had hoped for a moment with Margaret alone, he did not
get it. She squeezed his hand and gave him a long look from under her
black lashes. Then she shook her head. ‘T have to obey Mamma this last
day,” she said sweetly and followed her mother and Sandra out of the
vestry door. He was left alone in the quiet church with Baynes.

“Seem queer?” Baynes asked.

“A bit,” he said briehy. He looked at his watch. He wasn’t going to talk
over anything with a kid like Baynes. “Guess Fll go home and finish pack-
ing so that I can go along to the shop after dinner.” Then he relented.
“I daresay you’d better take the ring after ail.” He handed it to Baynes
and was rewarded by the pleasure in his brother’s young face.

“Thanks,”* Baynes said. “Fii see how Tom is. He was properly stewed
last night. He get that way often?”

“Fve only seen it a couple of times,” Edward said.

They parted, glad to separate. They were still too young to show their
fondness for each other or even to know how close they were as brothers.
Baynes went along kicking pebbles out of Ms path and Edward walked
home soberly. He wished that Margaret would not get such laughing fits.
They were not pure merriment, of that he was sure. Some day he would
tell her he did not like them.

When he reached home he went upstairs and found his mother bending
over his suitcase.

“Mow, Mother,” he began warmly.

“I was only putting in a new toothbrush,” she said defensively. “Your
old one wasn’t fit.”

He had not thought of so small a thing, but he knew she was right.
Would there be other things he had or ways of doing things that would
not seem nice?

His mother sat down on the window seat. “I know your father hasn’t
said a thmg to you, Edward. It’s queer how men can’t talk to each other.
I do want to say this— it’s so important to a woman that a man is— nice.”

He could not answer, nor look at her face. He kept looking at her hands,
thin and dry and strong, folded in her lap,

“Fll try to remember,” he mumbled.

“Maybe you don’t even know what I mean,” she said.

“I think I do, Mother.”

She sighed and suddenly the tears came to her eyes. “I do hope shell
make a good wife,” she said.

THE LONa XOVE

535

^ ^*Good or, not, I doQ’t, want any other,” he .replied genfly. ■ '

, ” She rose, and going to him, she kissed his cheek .and he put his

•arm around, her. ^Thank you for everything-and i wish Fd been better
here at home.”

, : You’ve always been a good, boy,” she replied.. “I put your, Chrlstoas
present in the bottom of your bag-and something for Margaret, too.”
,, She held the embrace a moment' too long and then w.ithdrew.. , **WeII,
I guess, theii'— ” She broke off, smiled throug.h mo.re tears, and we,nt away.

He sat' down where she had been sitting and stared out into the street
Nice? But Margaret might not think niceness was what she wanted. That
he- would have to find out. Nevertheless, vaguely alarmed by what his
mother had said, he looked over his things' and rejected a pair of pajamas
that were patched and put his best ones on top.- He cleaned his razor and
washed his comb and brush and took out a new tie for tomorrow morning.
New socks, new handkerchiefs, a clean shirt for every day.

The Chinese bells chimed through the house and he went downstairs
to dinner, and without desire to eat. His excitement he masked carefully
under an air of indifference and he was grateful that no one seemed to
notice him. His mother was urging Louise to let her use the curling tongs
on her hair and Baynes was abstracted. His father was silent.

“Coming down to the shop with me?” his father asked when the meal
was over.

“Yes,” he replied.

They put on their coats and hats and walked down the street together.
“About that loan,” his father began, “I don’t suppose you could borrow a
thousand yourself?”

Edward considered. “Fd have to talk it over with Margaret.”

His father threw him a sharp look. “Fm not telling your mother about
our house.”

“Margaret and I have made a sort of bargain to be frank with each
other,” Edward replied.

“We all do at first,” his father retorted. They walked for a block in
silence, then his father straightened his shoulders. “Well, it’s too much to
ask on your wedding day,” he said abruptly. They entered the shop and
parted, his father to the office and he to the pressroom to examine a page
of type for a temperance folder ordered by a woman’s society in Boston.
He studied the proof. “Strong drink destroys a man’s soul,” the headline
announced. He reduced the size of the type and lessened the space between
the lines. In one hour and forty minutes he would be standing before the
minister, with Margaret at his side. In two hours they would be man and
wife.

Edward was completely composed, this to his own astonishment. He
went through the ceremony with tender gravity, thinking of Margaret and
not himself. The church was full of the people they had both known all

536

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

their lives, elderly "meE and women whom they .had badgered:.!ii one way
or another as children, who had been their teachers in school and^ Sunday
school, who had sold them food and clothes and Christmas toys, who had
invited them to parties and picnics. And there were the young married,
watching with wise bright eyes, confident and approving. Children , stared,
awed by the mysticism of the ceremony, and girls and boys, too old to
be children, watched with hearts beating' for themselves when their time
came. It was the accomplishment . of his one dream, this hour set apart
and perfect, the church warm and bright with holly and pine and the
lighted lamps of evening streaming out through the windows to lie upon the
snow. Organ music filled the shallow arches of the roof and Mrs. Sulley,
the old doctor’s wife, short and squat and grotesque with fat, poured out
a voice powerful and pure. Or, Sulley had brought both of them into the
world, but he was not here. Over in the next valley a farmer’s wife was
giving birth to a child.

'"The voice that breathed o’er Eden,” the strong sweet voice was gentle
with tenderness.

And Margaret, who this morning had been willful with mischief, was
grave and tail. She carried a little ivory prayerbook and no flowers, and
her hair was a dark cloud under her lace veil. Sandra and Louise stood
behind her like twin roses, and he was sui’prised to see that Louise was
almost pretty. Her mother had curled her hair under the wide velvet hat,
and her lips looked red.

He felt Margaret’s shoulder against his, her arm touching his, the soft
fullness of her white form against his thigh and knees. Her low voice was
composed and sure and when he answered his own was unfaltering. Baynes
was sweating but when the time came for the ring he handed it to Edward,
hooked slightly over the tip of his little finger so that it would not drop.

'‘With this ring I thee wed.”

His voice followed old Dr. Hart’s slow steady tone, deep with tender-
ness, Margaret was looking at him, her blue eyes fathomless. His head
swam a little and he held her hand tightly. Their voices repeating, an-
swering, came in perfect rhythm. “Man and wife!” Out of the swirl of
joy these words came as clear as bells. It was over. He turned and held
his head high and with her hand inside his elbow, they walked down the
holly-wreathed aisle. “What God hath joined, let no man put asunder—”
No man, not even himself 1

“There!” Margaret said.

She took off her hat and put it on the seat opposite.

“It wasn’t too bad, was it?” he asked.

The train swerved around a hill and panted steadily on,

“Not for once,” she said.

“Not for once only,” he retorted.

She smiled at that and she put out her feet. “My shoes, too.”

THE LONG LOVE

531 '

, He, knelt^ and took the shoes from, her narrow silkshod feet. He held
her right foot in , Ms hand. ^‘What a little foot,” he murmured foolishly.
His restrained blood began to beat, /^But it’s cold-right through your stock-
ingl*/ He .nursed her foot in both hands. Her instep was high and arched
and her heel irm.

She curled her toes into Ms palm, '^You couldn’t do this if we were in
the day coach, Ned.”

He looked up. She was smiling down at .him' with' such a look of ten-
derness and shyness that he felt half faint, and he managed to keep Ms
head only enough to salvage Ms pride. At the very moment when they
had stepped on the train, the platform crowded with people coming home
for Christmas and shouting at the wedding party, Thomas Seaton had
thrust an envelope into his coat pocket.

“This is my private wedding gift to you-as man to man,” he had
muttered.

The train had started immediately after they got on, and he saw a porter
taking their bags.

“Wait!” he called.

“Look in your pocket, Ned,” Margaret said.

He had looked in the envelope and had found tickets for the drawing
room in the sleeping car. “Margaret, you’ve gone ahead of me again,”
he had said most reproachfully.

“Ned, I didn’t,” she answered. “He did it without my knowing it— until
five minutes before we got on the train.”

He could not be angry with her then and he could not be angry now.
It would have been hard indeed to have sat under the staring eyes of a
coach full of strangers. Still, there was something deep, somewhere, that
would have to be settled between them. His wife must be content with
what he could give her— she must forget her father and mother and turn
to her husband— but this was not the time for argument between them. He
pulled the pillow from the seat and put her feet upon it and covered them
with the steamer rug his mother had given them. Then he sat down beside
her and drew her into his arms and kissed her.

All these months he had guarded himself, wary of his own heart. Now
he held her long— his lips upon hers, and one by one the guards went down.
His arms tightened about her and she yielded for a moment. Then he felt
her struggle against Mm. First her hands pushed his shoulders, and then
she tore her lips away, and he saw a look of strange inquiry in her eyes.

He released her. “I am too much for you,” he said abruptly.

She busied herself with the flowers she wore on her breast. “I don’t
know yet,” she said after a moment. “You see, it’s not only you I don’t
know— it’s myself, too.”

He had begun to be hurt but with these words she healed.

“We won’t rush,” he said.

She considered this. “Still, we’ll do what we like, shall we?”

538

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Now it was he wiiO' considered.. ‘‘What if o.ne JlkeS' aod the other doesn’t?”.

She laughed. “You don’t know anything more than I do— I can see that.”

“You don’t mind?” His pride lifted his head again, on guard, ready to
be struck down.

She flung her arms about him. “I think ifs lovely.' We’re starting out
absolutely equal. Ned, tell me the truth, have you ever been in love
: before?”

“No-no,” he whispered, and leaning over her, he kissed her temple.
He could feel a beating vein there, straight from her heart.

“Nor I!” she sighed with joy.

“Sure?” He lifted his head to look into her eyes.

“Nothing like this.”

“But something?” he persisted.

“Just—searchings,” she answered.

The quick darkness of December had fallen, and putting off the lights as
long as the lines of hills could be seen, they watched the landscape darken.
He sat in a dream of delight, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder,
until he heard her voice murmuring against his neck.

“Ned!”

“Yes?”

“Could you eat very much at the reception?”

“No— could you?”

“No— and Fm starved.”

He reached for the light. The flying landscape disappeared and their
room became a cozy cell.

“We’ll eat here,” he said.

“Oh, yes.”

He pressed the button and when the porter had brought the menu, he
gave himself to the frowning consideration of the best food for happiness.
They studied the dishes together while the porter waited grinning, and
then gave thek order. Not until Edward was consuming duckling instead
of the Iamb chops he had ordered and ice cream instead of apple pie,
did he realize that he was not eating his favorite foods and finding it all
delicious.

“Only what you want,” he murmured.

“How do I know what I want?” she asked.

“Then promise to stop me as soon as you know!”

“What if I want more?”

“Promise to tell me!”

“I don’t know— if I can.”

This interchange in the middle of the night made him sit up in bed
and turn on the light. She lay against the pillow, the soft lace of her night-
dress open on her bosom. It pleased him that she did not put up her hand

THE LONG LOVE

539

tO/ draw the lace together. Her eyes were, shy but honest, and she did not
hide : them , from : him.

You aren’t afraid of me, Margaret?’^

*^Are you afraid of me?”

^Why?”. „■

‘‘I don’t want to offend you.”

: She lay thinking, for a moment, her eyes stiff on his. '*1 might offend
you,” she said at last

‘‘Only by making me think— I’d done something you didn’t like,” he
replied after a moment, and put out the light again.

They lay side by side, feeling their way toward one another, while the
train swayed its way southward through the darkness. Nothing he had
known of her in the past helped him now. He had iSrst seen her as a little
girl when he was twelve years old. She had been in school with him since
they were in first grade and doubtless he had seen her before then. But
when he was twelve and she eleven he had seen her one day with a sense
of shock and individuality. Her black hair, curling about her face in small
feathers, was in two braids tied with scarlet ribbons. Her cheeks were pink
and her lips were red, and she had just won a Fourth of July race on the
school grounds. He had been holding one end of the string when she fiung
herself against it. “Peggy’s first!” her schoolmates had yelled.

After that he had always seen her first, in the schoolroom in the morning,
out in the yard at recess, in church on Sundays. With what pains he had
maneuvered his place at the end of the pew so that he might see the back
of her head and the occasional turn of her profile, two seats ahead! Yet
he had not spoken to her alone for nearly three years after that, when he
was fifteen.

Yet ail the times they had talked together and walked together, had
quarreled and parted to make up shyly again, none of it helped him now.
She was new, a stranger, yet the one he loved with his whole being. He
was torn between selfishness and love. All the healthy hunger of his young
manhood, his unsatisfied, carefully hidden curiosities, the banked passions,
the honest animal in him, rose up now. He had no aids to self-control
except what he could muster for himself. Church and society had with-
drawn. They had given their sanction. Within holy wedlock whatever he
wanted was his.

Now it was only love that took command. He loved her so much that
he wanted above all to please her. In his total ignorance he had the instinct
from somewhere in his intelligence to know that union depended upon
two, not one. There was so much about her that he did not know-nay,
what did he know? He had no guide to the delicate mechanism of her
body and her spirit. Even she could not help him. And he did not want her
help, except in response and communication. Had she taken the lead in
love, he would have been repelled. The way was his to make. She was

540

: AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tlie sleeping ' princess whom he must, rouse, not to horror and .shame,: ..but
to pure, delight, so that they might live forever after in happiness. ■

' .'He.was .fright^^ the responsibility, and fear made him tender and
stow. Fear and love mingled together, sharpened .every sense and percep-
tion, and he was rewarded by her stillness and then by her yielding.

■ '‘It hurts me— but r love you.”

..“You are perfect”

“Ned, did anybody tell you anything?”

“No— did you know anything?”

“Nothing.”

“Then we’ll find the way ourselves.”

- “Yes.”..'

They slept, lulled by the rhythm of the train, woke and slept again, until
the day broke. He heard her voice at his ear, “Merry Christmas, Ned-
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas— let’s open our presents, sleepy head.”

He opened his eyes under the curtain of her hair over his face.

Christmas? He pulled her head down to his shoulder. “I’d forgotten.”

Reticence being his nature, Edward had conceded the wisdom of a
honeymoon as far as possible from home, as different as possible from the
accustomed air. The soft warm atmosphere of New Orleans, the sunshine,
the mists drifting in from the Gulf and melting away again, the laziness,
the sense of holiday, the colors on the streets and houses, the glimpses of
flowered inner courts and gardens, everything was new. Their boarding
house was small but good. Their room was large and cool, and a balcony
hung from the big window. Ironwork as delicate as lace shielded them
and revealed to them the patio below, where bamboo and ferns surrounded
a pool of clear water, still as the square of sky above them.

They lived as remote from daily life as though they were in a trance.
He ate food that he had never tasted before, hotly seasoned, sour and
sweet and peppered, fried shrimps and fish and ballooned potato chips,
spiced soups and flowered ices. He had always been a sparing eater of
plain foods but now he ate heartily, although with more prudence than
Margaret did. Indeed he saw to his secret surprise that she could be some-
thing of a glutton, for the taste of something that she loved. He ate ex-
perimentally, knowing that he would always choose for his daily food
the brown bread, the baked beans, the lean meat, of his habitual fare. But
Margaret, her cheeks glowing and her eyes sapphire, cried that she could
eat of such food forever,

“Why do we eat boiled potatoes and cabbage at home?” she inquired
of him.

“I guess we like plain things,” he replied.

“I don’t!” she declared. “I like things that taste.”

Her slender firm body was as hard as his own, defying fat, and she ate
as she pleased, slept hours on end when the mood for sleep fell on her or

THE LONG.EOVE

541

stayed up half, the night All his careful habits were upset 'and put as,icle,
and he let it be .so, knowing that it could not last* He encouraged curiosities
^that he did not .possess and followed her into old shops a.nd: churches
smelling, of mold and he bought for her strange floweis and an old French
chair and an ancient prayerbook with a clasp studded with seed pearls
and they sat in a square and ate oranges and watched children of every
color playing together. ■

didn’t think you’d be like this, Ned,” she exclaimed one day.

^*Like what?” he asked.

.. ^Tunr

^‘Why did you marry me then?” he asked.

**Because— ”

She walked beside him, both hands clasped over his arm, her head just
below the level of his eyes, and he did not press her. He was secretly
astonished at his own capacity for enjoyment. Here where they were
unknown he felt no embarrassment at her love openly expressed before
strangers. They were in a solitude of strangers, one among many couples
in love. While the rest of the world worked and went to bed early and
rose to work again, they lived the life of royal beings. Their room became
a sort of home, and the sight of her clothes hanging beside his grew natural
and was no longer a sight for wonder. When she had hung her frocks
beside his sober gray second suit, he had made occasion to open the closet
door during the day, that he might see again the intimacy. When she asked
him what he did, he was ashamed of his softness.

‘‘You must tell me,” she insisted.

‘Tm a fool, that’s ail,” he had said.

“Ah, don’t be ashamed of anything, Nedl”

“Weil then,” he opened the closet door. “Your frock there— against my
things—”

She ran to the closet and nestled her cheek against his coat. “I’ll tell
you something.”

“What?” His heart melted with love and went running through his veins
like fire.

“When I told my mother I wasn’t sure I wanted to marry you, she said,
*How do you feel when you see his coat hanging in the hail?’ So one day
when you were there talking to Father— remember?—! went into the hall,
and I put my arms around your coat— like this, and I knew.”

He was speechless with the wonder of this and he took her in his arms.

In the midst of love and satisfaction he was ashamed to discover in
himself, one day, small vague thoughts of business. He stifled these intruders
and hid them from Margaret as though they were thoughts of other women.
What then was his surprise when after another day of unalloyed joy and
idleness she said suddenly, “Don’t hate me, Ned, but I have a hankering to
get at our house!”

She was lying across the bed on her stomach, clad only in a chemise

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

made of wMte clouds, and her hair was hanging over her shoulders. He
still felt shy ' about staring at her. '*‘1 couldn’t' hate you, Margaret I; wish:
you wouldn’t say such; thiogs.^*

■■ . He was astonished that her courage was more than his. While., he had
.hiddeii Ms'' thought from her, she had dared to speak out. This' was intol-
erable and, so he, spoke; out, too. “Matter of fact, Fve been having an idea'
or two myself about the office.”

“Ned, you haven’t!”

It was an exclamation and accusation, and he was wounded. “Is that
worse than your thinking about the house?”

“No but, Ned-you’re thinking wrong things now. I don’t mind your
wanting to get back to the office, but aren’t you interested in the house?”

“Of course I am.”

“But you said office!”

He grew dogged. “The office is my job.”

“So is the house. We’re to do it together.”

“I doubt I’ll be much good at it.”

She shook her head until her hair flared. “If you aren’t Interested in
our home, I’ll live in a boarding house.”

Some sort of absurd quarrel was brewing between them and he stopped
it firmly. “Margaret, let’s go home.”

She did not answer this. Thinking it over, idly, she wound her dark hair
about her throat and tucked in the ends. “How do I look in a high collar,
Ned? Everybody will think we didn’t have a good honeymoon if we come
home early.”

“I like your throat bare. What do we care what people think? We know
what sort of a honeymoon we’ve had.”

“Have you really liked it?” Her voice was foolishly wistful.

He sat down beside her. “What do you think?”

“I think you have, a little— about as I have. It’s been perfect.”

He lifted her into his arms. “You’d better think so. It’s the only honey-
moon you’ll ever have.”

She sighed. “Oh, Ned, I didn’t really think you could be so heavenly
nice!”

“I knew how nice you’d be— and you are.”

He rocked her back and forth, his face in her neck, and she clung to
him with both arms. Then she began to laugh silently.

“Ned!”

“Yes?”

“Know why Tm laughing?”

“Do you?”

“I’ve thought of something.”

“Again?”

“Let’s go home secretly and not tell anybody!”

He sat still, contemplating this thought. It would be entirely possible to

THE^ LONG LOVE

live for a few days at least' In the Holcombe bouse— in tbeir house, he was
trying to cal! it now-withoiit anyone knowing it. They were not expected
back for a week, and the honse was ready, for them except for the last
dusting and the hot meal. Mrs. ,'Seaton had hired a maid for them, she had
written them, Hattie, an Irish girl. It would be nice to have the house their
own by right of possession before she came.

,*T am greedy,'’ Margaret said. ‘1 want to begk' living now-this minute.*'

‘Tsn’t this living?** he asked. '

‘‘Holiday,**' she retorted. She lay in his arms, looking at Mm, and he
felt his head whirl. Her complete abandon- was entrancing and at the same
time it made him uneasy. What was the source of her childlike naturalness
and what did it mean? He knew that there was no such relationship be-
tween his own father and mother. He knew that to this day his mother
undressed in the dark, after his father was in bed. His father was irritated
by it because she stumbled over furniture and Edward had heard Mm
grumbling.

Margaret herself had made a quick end to any shyness. She had laughed
when he wrapped himself in his brown bathrobe their first evening in the
hotel “Why do you want to put that heavy thing on?** she inquired.

“I’m a hairy sort of a beast,” he had replied in an effort to appear
casual “Not beautiful—”

She had come over to him at this and had taken off the robe and looked
at him from head to foot. “You have a good figure. Why hide it?” This
she had said so dispassionately that he was immediately set at ease. Then
her sapphire eyes had sparkled wickedly. “Especially from me!”

They had laughed upon that and he had hung the robe in the closet.

And yet, although he knew well enough that it was not lack of proper
modesty, there was danger in her naturalness. What would he do if ever
she displayed it to anyone except him? It was a delightful private trait,
but could it be kept private? He reviewed in his memory possible occasions
when she might have been tainted with what was called “being too free.*’
He could remember nothing of the sort, but he had not been much in the
Seaton house. He caught her looking at him curiously now and suddenly
he felt ashamed of himself and buried his face in her hair. He doubted
that he was good enough for her, even at his best. This doubt at least he
determined to keep to himself.

The landscape was deep in snow when they drew up to their own door.
They had left the train at Rockford, the station above Chedbury, and then
had spent an hour shopping for food. Margaret had bought a huge basket
and into this their parcels were piled, while he went to find some sort of
conveyance. When he came back he saw that she needed deliverance.

“You strangers around here?** the inquisitive grocer inquired.

“We’re moving nearby,” Margaret answered.

“Rockford?” the grocer persisted.

544

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Out m the coimtry,” Margaret said calmly. ' .

Edward broke in. “There’s , a farmer going out our way* 1 was lucky
enough to catch him at the livery stable.”

They escaped the grocer and lugging their basket they climbed into the
sleigh puHed by a couple of heavy farm horses. The farmer was taciturn
and drove them speechlessly to the house. For bis silence they were so
grateful that Edward added a quarter to the two dollars of the agreed price,
but the farmer shook his head, and still silent, he picked out the extra
coin and returned it and drove on.

“How wonderful he is!” Margaret cried. “Oh, if everybody in the world
were like that—except you and me!”

Edward reached for the key behind the shutter of a window, and itted
it into a frozen lock. It would not turn.

“Breathe into it,” Margaret advised.

But his breath was not warm enough, and so she stooped and blew out
a frosty gust of sweet warmth. Her breath was always sweet. It was one of
his blessings. Together, laughing and blowing, they warmed the lock and
the key turned and they stepped into the clean ice-cold house. A look of
horror went over her face and she stopped on the threshold without clos-
ing the door.

“You didn’t lift me over the doorstep!” she cried.

He seized her in his arms, carried her out, and brought her in again,
setting her down before the hearth in the living room. He had learned to
call it that from her, for in his father’s house there was no such room.
A parlor, a sitting room, neither was a living room.

“Sit down while I get our iSuce started,” he commanded her.

“Do order me about, Ned, just for sentiment’s sake,” she replied and
sat down.

He knelt on the hearth and put a match to the fire already laid. “As soon
as this starts I shall go down cellar and get the furnace going,” he said.
“But you’ll warm your little feet here.”

“Light the kitchen range first,” she urged. “I can’t wait.”

She could not keep from singing. Song was impossible to him, but it
bubbled out of her. She could not sit still and forgetting his command, as
she always did when she wished, she ran about the house. He lit the kitchen
stove and downstairs in the cellar he could hear her feet, flying over the
floor above his head. They paused at the stair and she called down, “I
shan’t go upstairs until you come with me!”

“Good girl!” he shouted back.

The furnace was laid ready, too, and he poured a little kerosene on
the kindling and heard the roar of fire. This was the warmth of his house
and for the first time he felt the house was his own. Then he frowned. There
was no sieve for the ashes and there would be waste of coal. The thought
of buying a sieve and even of using it gave him pleasure although it was a
task that he had detested whenever be had been compelled to do it in his

THE LONG LOVE

father’s' house. He washed his hands at' the kitchen sink, ■ saw that the ire
was blazing in the living room, and; then went into the hall where Margaret
waited, her foot on the stair. She flung her arm about Mm and .he '.put
his about her and thus arm in arm they went up the broad stairs. ''Mr.'
Holcombe had not liked the narrow stairs ' of NeW' England and he had
built ' his hall spaciously and the stairs wide, as they had been Jn his home
in. England. ,

“Bless him,” Margaret said.'

“Arc you thinking about Mr. Holcombe, too?” Edward asked amazed.

“Weren’t you?” she replied.

They walked the length of the upstairs hall to the room that was to be
their own. This was the room where he was to live his intimate life with
her! His children would be conceived and born here. He would grow old
here, and here, please God, he would die.

Death he had not thought of once since his marriage, and now it sprang
at him monstrously. One of them must die first! It had not occurred to
Mm that it would be so. But which? Could he live if it were she? And yet
she must not be left alone. Then he put the thought away. Certainly he
must not tell her what he was thinking. He tried quickly to think of some-
thing else, lest with her uncanny intuition she discern the cloud of death in
his mind.

“The sun pours in,” he murmured. Two wide windows opened to the
south and beyond them the snow-laden hill rose round to the blue sky.

She turned suddenly and Md her face in Ms breast, “Don’t leave me!”
she whispered.

“But of course I shan’t leave you,” he protested.

“Let me die first,” she begged.

“I promise,” he said quietly.

He held her and then as suddenly she drew away from him.

“I must cook dinner!” she exclaimed and ran down the stair like thistle-
down, her skirts floating about her.

They were alone for three days, and during the whole time Edward
worked in almost silent zeal and entire absorption. He went over the entire
house from attic to cellar. While Margaret dusted and arranged closets
and bureau drawers, and put wedding presents into their new places, he
put up hooks, tightened hinges, adjusted doors, painted worn spots on floors
and window sills, and hammered picture hooks. Beyond the windows the
snow remained immovably deep, and he took Ms exercise in shoveling
paths fiercely and thorougMy. He enjoyed tMs far more than New Orleans
and faced the truth about himself that however much he longed to enjoy
what might be called pleasure he found Ms real delight in work. He
tramped around the outside of the house, examining every shutter and
frame and lock. There was a large porch on the back of the house and
there were boards m the floor that had rotted and must be replaced. Hour

546

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

by hour be made the bouse his own and his home and when the fourth
night came he had forgotten that Mr. Holcombe had ever lived here. He
built the fire in the living room as he had done: each evenings and it was
his fire and his hearth.

As though Margaret felt his possession ' she went upstairs after supper
was ready and she put on a long-sleeved, long-skirted frock of dark blue
velvet He went to meet her and stood at the foot of the stairs, gazing
at her as she came down. She did not evade his adoration and it did not
make her shy, and this was another of her traits that he loved. His mother
met praise with uneasy laughter and denial but Margaret smied at him
with full acceptance.

“I put this on to celebrate our finishing the house, she said. She stood
on the last step and leaned upon his shoulders, and he put his hands about
her slender waist and lifted her in his arms and carried her to the big
leather chair by the hearth which had been in his room at Harvard, a gift
from his father and mother one Christmas. Then he stood and looked
around the rooms. Margaret had lit candles and lamps everywhere before
she went upstairs, and room opened into room in a glow of light.

*‘We can live here always,” Margaret said. “There’s room to grow.”

The measure of what he was to have depended now altogether upon
himself and he was sure of himself, too. So far in his life, so good.

“Now I know you are really my wife,” he said to her.

She smiled up at him, her hands clasped behind her head. “And haven’t
you known it until now?”

“Not to the bottom of me.” He fell on his knees before her.

“I haven’t forgotten my promise— to make our marriage my life. I’ll not
forget that as long as I live.”

She took his face in her hands. “I hope I’m good enough for you,”
she cried softly and when he protested she closed his lips with her kiss.

They ate their supper; they spent the evening in happy wandering
through their house; they sat by the fire until it died to coals. Then they
locked the house and went to bed. He had not overcome the shyness of
his body. He could not put into words the act of his passion. He did not
want words. He wanted silence and feeling. But she wanted words and she
made talk, laughing, half play, half teasing, as though she evaded the depths
of his feeling. He had allowed this playfulness until now but suddenly
tonight he made her keep silent.

“Don’t talk, don’t talk.”

“But, Ned, you’re so serious, darling? And this is joyful, isn’t it?”

He did not answer her and she fell into silence, too, and gravely she
accepted his love. When it was over he was astounded and then terrified
because she began to cry, silently.

“I hurt youl” he exclaimed,

“No, you didn’t,” she sobbed

“Then— why?”

THE. TONG LOVE

547 ,

don’t, ImoW’—I don’t .to feel d,iffereat” She whose' words came .
aiways' sO',.eas.ily could tell Mm no more than that and he held 'her until
she slept, distressed and yet exultant. '

. He was awakened the next ^ morning by a voice in the lower haJl .and
he '^got up, and put on his bathrobe .and went to the stairs. There he ,Iooked
into the red and frightened face of Hattie, the maid,

**Oh, my soul and body!” she screamed. ‘T didn’t ,k,now you was here!”

^ **We got home early,” he explained.

:'T, didn’t bring anything to eat with me,” she cried.'

“There’s food in the storeroom,” he to.ld her. “T like oatmeal and
scrambled eggs and my wife likes just eggs. Toast, of course, and coffee.
Well be down in half an hour.”

Hattie changed everything in the house unconsciously but subtly. He
and Margaret were now master and mistress as well as man and wife
and they came downstairs decorously to sit down to a meal they had not
prepared. Their talk must be fit for a servant to hear and he found himself
making plans for the day in so dry a manner that Margaret’s eyes grew
wide. When Hattie had left the room she looked at him with reproach.
“Is that the way you are going to talk from now on?” she asked.

He pretended not to know what she meant. “Don’t you think I ought
to get to work and earn our living?”

“But you sound so stuffy,” she complained.

“Perhaps work is stuffy,” he rejoined.

She made a direct attack. “You know you were talking for Hattie!”

“I was trying to talk in spite of her,” he retorted.

“The only way to be happy with servants is to forget they exist,” she
declared.

He ate in silence for a few minutes. Hattie had made the scrambled
eggs today too hard. That would have to be changed sooner or later. Could
anyone forget she existed? It would take practice.

Margaret talked on, oblivious of Hattie’s comings and goings. “I don’t
like those curtains in the guest room, after all. What if I change them with
the ones in the dressing room? Do you object to large cabbage roses, Ned?
I love them-so hearty! Hattie, I don’t like my toast so brown-make me
another slice, there’s a good girl! Or I wouldn’t mind having them in my
own boudoir, if you think they’re too feminine for you— yes, that’s better.
I’ll put them in my boudoir.”

She had insisted on a dressing room for him and a boudoir for herself,
their bedroom being the big room between, and although he had thought
it pretentious, yet he found he had liked dressing in privacy and much as
he loved her, he did not mind missing the brief interval between her
tumbling out of bed with her curls all flaring and then her appearance
again, clothed and the curls smoothed. He disliked disorder, and he knew

548

AMERICAN .TRIPTYCH

her well enough to know now that order was not the rhythm of her being
as it was of his.

;; '.llie meal drew to a close and with some sentiment he, prepared to leave
the house.'.and go to work. But she was preoccupied with the changing of
curtains and he thought her casual. When he put his arms about her, in the
hall after carefully closing the dining-room door against Hattie, he inquired,
“You won’t mind being left alone all day?”

thought I’d just run home for a bit this morning,” she told him«

^‘Why didn’t you tell me before?” he asked a little hurt.

She opened her eyes at him again. *‘You aren’t going to expect me to
teU you every time I run home?”

^^But this is home now,” he reminded her.

^‘Yes, but you know what I mean. Don’t tease!”

He would not allow himself to be jealous of her family. “Call me up at
the oiaice?”

“I might even come and see you at the office.”

“Do, my darling!”

“We might have luncheon in Chedbury and come home together,” she
suggested.

“Can you eat that food?” he asked.

“Oh, once in a while,” she said.

So their day shaped itself as they stood in each other’s arms. He opened
the door and looked at her and closed it again to kiss her once more and
then ran resolutely out, stopping to wave from the gate, and seeing her
face pressed against the window, he forced himself to walk on. Luckily
there had been no more snow during the night and the half mile to
Chedbury would not be too difficult by means of walking in the ruts of
farm wagons. Soon he would have to have a vehicle of some sort.

When three quarters of an hour later he sat at his desk, he knew his
man’s life had begun, at last.

Edward Haslatt was not one of those who rejoice to see the spring.
There was something about winter that he liked. The contrast between the
roughness of frozen snow and bitter cold and cruel winds sharpened his
sense of combat and deepened the comfort of his house when he opened
the front door and stepped into his warm wide hail. During the eleven years
since he and Margaret had first begun to live in the house he had im-
proved it until today it was as fine a home as could be found about
Chedbury.

Chedbury was, outwardly, as it had always been, except that its ancient
beauty had been made more perfect. The church had been recently painted,
and since the war, every house about the green had been repaired and
freshened with paint.

Actually Chedbury was engaged in a private war of its own. During
the World War a manufacturer of steel products, lured by the promise of
cheap labor, had tried to buy land at the southern end of the town for a
factory. Thomas Seaton had risen from the pleasant lethargy of his life,
had led an embattled township with such success that Jim Figaro, the
ambitious young industrialist, had not been able to buy land nearer than
two miles away. Even this was too near for Chedbury, which complained
that the factory smoke spoiled the paint on the church when the wind
blew from the wrong direction.

Meanwhile South Chedbury began to grow. Italians, Portuguese, and
Canadians had begun to make a town of their own, compounded of small
flimsy bungalows. From these the townfolk of Chedbury separated them-
selves severely and old separations among themselves were forgotten as
they banded together against the new. Haslatt now was as good as Seaton,
for both alike were against South Chedbury.

Edward smiled wryly when his mother and Mrs. Seaton met at the
Village Improvement Society, and yet why not? Margaret was a Seaton
and he had built a small, respectable book business about the printing shop.

TWO

550

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

wMch was BOW Ms owa. The question today was whether he should not
open a New York office. The center of the publishing bosmess was there,
as Baynes was always telling him. Writers, it seemed, one found only in the
city. Well, he did not want to publish too many books, and he was cautious
in the presence of writers.

He stepped out of his house on an early spring morning with his mind
full of these problems. Margaret followed him out of the door, and he
lingered beside her on the front porch. Two years ago they had torn down
the long narrow porch and had put up this wide square one with tMck
wMte pillars. It had added dignity to the house and he liked it.

‘Tfs still cold,” Margaret said, shivering in her dark woolen frock.
'^‘Though it looked as warm as May from the living-room window! I do
believe that’s a daffodil.”

She ran down the steps ahead of him, as lithe and swift as ever and
stooping over a flowerbed, now a mass of short green leaves, she plucked
a daffodil bud, tipped with yellow.

"If 11 bloom quickly enough in the house,” he said. "Next week this time
they’ll ail be out.”

He kissed her again, first glancing toward the gate. Margaret laughed.
"You’re still shy about kissing me, aren’t you, poor darling!”

He denied this stoutly. "Not shy— ifs just that I feel private about it.”

Smiling, she thrust the daffodil bud into her fichu, reached up and pulled
him by ffie ears and kissed the underside of his chin. "Good-by, Ned!
Don’t be late.”

"Not tonight. Tomorrow night that fellow’s bringing his book.”

"Oh, dear,” she murmured.

"He’s coming on the late train, and if the book seems good, it might
be sensible to be friendly, eh, Margaret?”

"Only if his fingernails are clean,” she said firmly. "The last one was
fearfully grimy and the book wasn’t any good after all.”

Edward laughed. "Til ask him to hold out his hands.”

He was suddenly grave. The words made him think of something. She
caught his look and turned away, a shadow on her face.

"Don’t be hard on Mary any more,” he said in a low voice. "After all,
she’s only a little thing yet.”

Margarefs full underlip tightened. "I can’t bear bitten nails. Ifs dis-
gusting. Besides, if she doesn’t stop now she’ll go on all her life.”

"You’ll turn the child against you, Margaret, and thafU be worse than
bitten nails.”

Her eyes filled with tears. "I don’t care about myself.”

"Yes, you do,” he urged, "or if you don’t, then I care about you, I
can’t bear the children to think you’re scolding them.”

"But I must scold them when they’re naughty,” she insisted. "Else who
will teach them anything, Ned? You’re away all day and when you come
home you just want to pet them. Ifs I who have to be with them.”

THE LONG LOVE

“If you axe just your OWE self, dear, they’ll leam,” he' urged.

“Ah, hut they don’t,” she retorted.

He saw the tears glistening on her lashes and forbore. "Well, we won’t
start arguing on this beautiful day, my love. Go back Into the house ;and
get warm. If Mary: frets you too much, we’ll , pack her off , to boarding
school It’s you I think of first”

■ She pulled a handkerchief from her white lace cuff, wiped her eyes,
and smiled. “Fm not as wicked as you think, I read stories to Mary and
I made little cakes yesterday that she likes.”

“I know,” he said fondly. “You’re the best of mothers, , at, heart.”

They had been walking slowly down the clean-swept path and now they
were at the gate. He did not kiss her again. Instead he smiled and tipped
his hat

She leaned over the gate after he had closed it. “What time will you
be home, Ned?”

“About six, I think,” he called back. He waved as she turned, and has-
tened for the trolley. His eyes were tender when he caught it and found
an empty seat

She’d go back into the house and get Mary into her coat and hood
and then, putting on the heather-brown coat that he’d bought for her when
they were in England last year, she would walk with the child part way
to the new grade-school building. Probably she would take the boy with
her. It was strange to think that he was the father of three children, and
that little Tom would start school next year. The baby, a girl, Sandy, was
a year old. Three children were enough, he had decided. He had been
careful that Margaret did not have children too quickly. Each time she
had been in good health, rested and ready, and the children had been bom
strong and handsome. His eyes clouded again at the thought of Mary.
What was wrong between Mary and Margaret? There might have been
no drop of common blood in them. The child adored her mother and
could not please her.

“She’s a bit slow,” Edward mused, “and Margaret is so fiashing quick.”

Yes, he had been careful of his wife. He tried always to think first of
her and what she wanted instead of his own needs. He sighed, thinking
of the years just ahead when Mary must grow and her mother must let her
grow. Then he stopped thinking. Habit warned him that the next stop was
his. He rose and marched down the aisle, tall, slender, swaying as the car
curved and stopped,

“So long, Mr. Haslatt,” the conductor said.

“So long, Bob,” Edward answered and swung down the step, crossed
the street, and went into his own shop. He still called it the shop, as Ms
father had always done, although in the years since he had taken the
responsibility for the business, he had steadily enlarged the plant, always
with caution, and always against his father’s will Someday he would take
over the whole building. He wanted even now to erase old Mather’s name

552

AMEEICAM TRIPTYCH

and make it Haslatt Sons, Printers and PuMiskers. Matker had died the
year after he had started the publishing.

That first year of probation had been a heartbreaking one. Edward had
dreamed of a successful book and a handsome profit. Instead he had only
squeaked by. The book that had so fascinated him had made very little
money, and he had defended it doggedly before old Mather as he lay on
what was to be his deathbed.

isn’t this one book that I bank on, Mr. Mather,” he had said. *Tfs
a first novel and a very good one, considering. The man who wrote this
book can write a better one. Why, talking with some publishers in Boston
they tell me it’s always more than likely that you lose on the first book
of any writer. And we’ve made a hundred and seventy-five dollars.”

“Overhead, overhead,” old Mather had growled.

“I counted in overhead,” Edward had retorted.

Well, he had squeaked by, and the next year Tennant had given him
the big book, the one that had made it known all over the world, he liked
to think, that Mather and Haslatt were publishers as well as printers. On
the strength of real profits he had ventured on eight more books, ail of
which were failures, so that his second year actually ended with a loss.
Old Mather had died during the year, however, and although his father
was terrified enough, he had agreed to go on with Edward for another
year, and the printing business had held up. The next year he’d got the
rights for two British books, and they had sold well, and by the third year
Tennant had another big book, and he had Insisted on larger offices. The
fourth year he had lost Tennant to a New York firm which had wiled him
away with a huge advance. That had staggered them a bit until he had
found WeUaby, who wrote New England historical romances, and these
had carried them ever since. He was somewhat ashamed of the romances
but the profits from them enabled him to publish books he could not pos-
sibly dare to accept otherwise.

He entered the combination freight and passenger elevator, nodded to
the boy who ran it and stood silent while it carried him to the third floor.
He arrived half an hour later than the employees and so he went up alone.
The elevator came to a too sudden stop and he remonstrated mildly, “Now,
Sam, I told you to have your mind on what you are doing.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Haslatt,” the boy said quickly.

He stepped out, knowing that he had said enough. They were all a little
afraid of him and he considered this a good thing. He nodded to the
telephone girl and passed his father’s office. Then he went back and opened
the door. His father was already at his desk, poring over a ledger.

“You’re early, aren’t you?” Edward asked.

“You’re late,” his father retorted, without looking up.

Edward smiled. “Some time I’m going to spend the night here. It’s the
only way I can get ahead of you,”

THE LONG LOVE

553

“I can’t sleep the way you do,” his father repUed. “Say, Edward, look

at this.’’

He held a figure firmly with his finger and Edward looked over his
shoulder. ‘^You’ve overadvertised five hundred dollars on Wellabyl”

^‘Figures aren’t all in yet,” Edward said sharply. “There was a good
sale at Christmas and scarcely any books came back in January.”

“Hm, hmm,” his father mumbled. “I can’t see how it’s fair business to
take back books just because a bookshop can’t sell ’em. You don’t send
back to Wellaby the books you can’t sell”

Edward did not reply. He nodded to his father and went Into his own
ofBce and closed the door. Jane Hobbs, the secretary he shared with his
father, had opened his morning’s mail and on top of the letters he saw one
from his brother Baynes, whom he had allowed reluctantly to go to New
York for a week to bring back estimates of what an office there would
cost. Baynes had taken Sandra with him. The New York office, Edward
suspected, was more than half her idea.

He took up the letter and read it carefully. Sandra, Baynes said, was
proving a great help with the office. Lewis Harrow, the young fellow he
was sending to Edward to look over, was bringing a couple of manuscripts
with him. They had located an inexpensive place, very small, really only
a suite of three rooms, in a building in midtown, occupied by three other
publishing firms. The address was a good one. That was Sandra, Edward
thought grimly. He put down the letter. He would not be quick about
taking on the extra overhead. If he took it on, it would be for only a year,
and Baynes would have to bring in enough money to cover the costs. He
had not dared to tell his father anything about it yet. He frowned slightly
and read the rest of his letters, his mind still busy with Baynes.

This younger brother had complicated life by following in his elder
brother’s footsteps. Among all the many livelihoods that Baynes might
have chosen, he would have only publishing. In printing he bad not the
slightest interest. He wanted only to make books, perhaps even to write
them some day. And he had married Margaret’s younger sister. Edward
had been not a little disgusted when soon after his own marriage Baynes
had confessed that he was in love with Sandra.

“You can’t be seriously in love when you are only a freshman in col-
lege,” he had said sternly, and then being too honest for his own comfort,
he had admitted to himself that he had been in love with Margaret long
before college.

“Sandra is somewhat frivolous,” he had then said to Baynes.

Baynes had grinned and said nothing. He was still growing and Edward
saw with displeasure, which he recognized as unreasonable, that his
younger brother would eventually be some inches taller than himself.

There had been no more conversation about Sandra, and Baynes had
persisted in a desultory courtship that ended in betrothal in his senior
year in college. Neither Edward nor Margaret put confidence in the mar-

554

. AMERICAN, TRIPTYCH,'

riage, for Sandra said quite franMy that she did not whether ,; she

would like Baynes when he had finished growing up although now she
thought him amusing. Yet in less than a year it had taken place. The
young couple had moved^ at once to New ; York, where Baynes had , worked
, in lowly positions in several publishing houses, and , Sandra’s luxuries had
continued to be supplied by her father. When war was declared, Baynes,
egged on by Sandra, had volunteered for a British regiment, and Sandra
followed him to England Four years of fighting on one front after another
had left Baynes still unscathed, and apparently unchanged, except for an
even taller frame and broadened shoulders, both of which Sandra ap-
proved. When Baynes came back a captain, he got out of uniform as
quickly as possible and applied to Edward for a job, declaring that he and
Sandra would live at the Seaton house. Neither of them wanted a house
of their own and there was still no talk of children. In the last year, how-
ever, there had been a great deal of talk about New York. Edward had
felt that Baynes coming into the business as a younger brother should learn
the printing business from the bottom up, but Baynes persisted in remain-
ing ignorant, declaring that he did not know one type from another. He
took no interest in Edward’s slowly growing typographical library. To Ed-
ward’s horror he did not know Scotch type from Garamond and already
he spent half his time in New York— hunting writers, he insisted.

don’t know what to do with Baynes,” Edward had confided gloomily
to Margaret one winter’s night after the children were in bed. He had that
day received a letter from Baynes, in which this younger brother swore
he had found a genius, whose name was Lewis Harrow, and that upon the
strength of this find the city office must be opened immediately and that
Sandra was, therefore, looking for an apartment.

*‘What’s the matter with Baynes?” Margaret had inquired sleepily. She
had been sledding with the children in the afternoon and her cheeks were
scarlet and her lashes drooping.

“He won’t learn anything about printing, and still he wants to go into
the business,” Edward complained.

“Why don’t you find out what he already knows?” Margaret asked.
“Sandra says he’s full of flair.”

“Flair for what?” Edward demanded.

“Smelling out people who have books in them.”

Edward had not replied to this. “You had better go to bed,” he said
to Margaret after a few minutes. “It’s no good your pretending you aren’t
asleep.”

She rose at that, smiling drowsily, her hair all wisps of curls, and then
she had trailed out of the room, her long velvet skirt behind her.

Nevertheless it was on the strength of this possible flair that he had con-
sented soon after that to take Baynes into the shop, and it was still in the
hope of this flair that he was considering a New York office. Sooner or
later his father would have to be told. Prudent and conservative, Edward

THE LONG LOVE-

555

was,, wise enotigli to. knoW' that' these two qualities, though essential, were
BOt enough. The publishing business demanded & stretch of the imagina-
tion that he was not sure he had. Baynes alone of course would be a
menace to the business. Out of a possible hundred ideas that he produced,
he would be lucky if five were practical. This Lewis Harrow might be a
genius-and might not Edward sighed, wondered if he ought to refuse his
younger brother as assuredly he would have refused any other young man
he had hired, and then decided he would risk his faith in the imponderable
flair. He had recognized in himself this faith in a quality he saw but did
not possess. It was what had made him want to marry Margaret, and It
had kept him married to her irrevocably all these years. He was In love
with her immortal quality. But where had the immortal dust dropped upon
the soul of Baynes, born of the same parents as himself? And assuredly
Louise bad none of it. Louise, still unmarried, was teaching school in Ched-
bury. She was one of the stones that he gave his children instead of bread,
he sometimes thought grimly. Mary would have her next year in fifth
grade, and he did not relish the idea. What did his pallid sister have to
give his shy, easily agonized little daughter?

He pressed his clean-shaven lips together firmly, touched a bell, and
without looking up when his secretary, Jane Hobbs, came in, he began to
dictate.

“Dear Baynes: Yours of the eleventh inst. received. You can go ahead
on the office provided the total outlay is not beyond the figures I gave you,
including office equipment, etc. As to the author, please make no promises
until I have sized him up. Also I must see completed ms. as usual. No
advance, of course, until I have made up my mind. The time has come to
tell Father about plans and I will do so today. I expect strong objections
and I look to you to prove him wrong.

Your aff. Bro.,

Ed.»^

He dictated steadily for an horn*, letters filled with figures, estimates,
rejections, complaints, and then fingering the lobe of his ear and pursing
his lips, he considered a plunge. Jane Hobbs waited. She was a thin-faced
middle-aged woman and she waited, pencil poised. His weakness, as she
knew for she was the custodian of his typographical library, was in buying
new type.

“Whaf s on your mind?” she now inquired.

He looked at her half slyly, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You
know those Fell types?”

“I was looking at ’em yestiddy,” she replied.

“We ought to have the Janson, to go with them.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Dutch seventeenth century.” He hurried on under her disapproving
look. “It’s like the Garamond— easy to read, sharp, beautiful type. Yes, I’li
have it—”

556

AMERICAN TRIBTYCH

He dictateci the letter brusqpely. It had taken; five years' to make Jane
realize he could do as' he liked in the business. Five years he, had^ endured
,';her secret, 'returns his father to report what he was doing. Then one
day he had locked the door of the office and standing against it' he 'had
told hei' lhat he would fire her if ever again she told his father anything.
He would talk with his father ' when it was necessary— not she! And JanCj
weeping hideously, had accepted his coming of age.

**You’!i have to buy more cases,” she said grimly, rising to leave the
room,"' ■ . ■ ■ ■ ■

“Order them,” he commanded. “I’ve decided to bring the fonts for
initials and small types out of the shop— have everything together so that
I can pick what I want. The men leave things around.”

When she was gone he got up and as usual made the rounds of the
shop. He liked to be what he called a manufacturing printer. He was proud
of his new power presses and his machine-made paper. Above anything
he feared the accusation of being artistic. He wanted to be sound. And
yet he knew his own weakness. He could not resist fine type and richly
made paper, the six months that he and Margaret had once spent in
England and on the Continent, he had visited every old foundry he could
find and he had brought back old type faces and handmade papers. The
shop now was separated from the offices and the library and reception
room by a thick double wall and double doors. He did not want the noise
of the machines racking the air where he planned and wrote. But once
through the double doors the noise was pleasant to him. He liked the
smell of ink and the look of the grimed men watching so intently the
pages they set and printed. It was a hobby of his that every man in the
shop had to know something of what all other men did, so that each had a
feeling for the whole and for himself as a part of the works. He sternly
rejected any notion of indispensability. If some man were ill or on vaca-
tion, he would not hire another to take his place. Someone in the shop had
to know how to take up and he himself was not above spending a morning
at type setting.

But what he loved best to see were the sheets of a book rolling off the
press, then to be folded, gathered, stitched, and trimmed ready for the
casing. The bindery was the newest and most modem part of the shop.
He brought Margaret there sometimes to show her samples of cloth and to
discuss color and design. He did not expect from her much interest in the
business, but sometimes she showed deep and continuing interest in a manu-
script and then she wanted to meet the writer and from then until she
held the finished book in her hand, she wanted to follow every step. He
enjoyed her presence, although it was sometimes troublesome, for she did
not realize, or would not, that however exciting a book, it could only be
one of many things that he must think about.

He paused beside a press this morning and watched the letters stamp
themselves upon a heavy cream-colored paper. He had ordered Caslon

THE LONG LOVE

557

type for ttiis particular book, a little book it was, memoirs written by an
old gentleman in Boston, and privately printed. Baynes was scornful about
private printing. “You only get what other publishers turn down.’^

But Edward would not agree. “I don’t look at it that way,” he had
replied in the steady somewhat monotonous voice that had become habitual
to him these years. “There are books that people don’t want put into the
trade. They write them for friends or family. It’s natural they want a hand
in choosing the paper and the type and the binding. I don’t see why they
shouldn’t.”

So he had gone on printing small private books of poems and essays
and memoirs, and sometimes he had printed sermons and plans for peace
and he had never expressed to anyone, not even to Margaret, his secret
pleasure in satisfying these individuals who longed to make permanent
something of their lives. He motioned to the elderly man who was running
the press and the machine stayed.

“Is that ink a true black?” he asked. “I don’t want it on the brownish
side. Fd rather it had a touch of violet.”

“That’s what you said,” the man replied, “and that’s how I mixed it”

“It’s all right,” Edward said after a moment. “It dries blacker.”

“It does,” the man agreed.

The machine started again and the creamy paper ran its course. The
old gentleman had written about his boyhood in Boston. He could just
remember the sailing ships that went to China, and he had taken an hour
of Edward’s time to explain why he wanted his memories kept for his
grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. “It gives meaning to one’s life,”
he had said half diffidently, pulling at his white whiskers.

“It does indeed, Mr. Stallings,” Edward had agreed. He wanted meaning
in his own life, too.

They had decided on no color in the ornamentation, but there were to
be fine initials at the head of each chapter, and black and white fleurons.

He moved on down the aisle. At the next press, in complete contrast, he
was doing a banker’s biography, set in Bodoni, with wide margins and on
hard paper. He paused, admiring in silence the presswork. This press was
run by a young man from South Chedbury, John Carosi, whom he had
hired only the year before, a brilliant workman, uncertain of temper, and
he had a suspicion that the fellow was secretly interested in setting up a
union. Well, if he had such ideas he would have to go. A union shop,
Edward had said firmly, he would not have.

He decided not to speak to the young pressman and he walked slowly
down the central aisle and back to the ojSSiccs. He had better talk with his
father now, before they were both tired with the day’s work. He did not
like to lose his temper with his parents. Indeed he would not. They were
both getting childish and needed care and yet they resented any loss of
authority. His father drew the same salary he always had, and this, too,
was something that Edward would not think about Now that Louise was ofi

55 $,

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

their hands and Baynes earning' his own living Edward could not repress
the dogged thought that surely he and Margaret and the growing children
needed more than they had,. Yet the, business could not stand an increase
in what he paid himself unless his father took less.

never suggest it, though,”' he had said to Margaret only last night.

*‘Of course not,” she had agreed almost indifferently.

To money she was always indifferent. Where it came from, how much
they had, whether they were secure, were questions which she never asked.
She bought little for herself and wore her old clothes because she liked
them, and yet she could commit an extravagance that left him breathless,
as when she came home from New York one day wearing an old wrought-
gold necklace.

“Fii need a couple of hundred dollars, Ned,” she had told him cheer-
fully.

He had felt the crimson blood fly to his face. “I don’t have it, Margaret,”
he had said simply.

The look of wonder on her face was like a blow. “Oh, I’m sorry.” That
was all she said. She took the necklace off at once.

His pride had risen at that and he had taken it from her and put it on
again. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ll call it your birthday present.”

He had borrowed the money next day from the bank, giving his note for
three months. That had been eight years ago. Now, of course, he could
easily have paid for the necklace.

He tapped on his father’s door and walked in. The old man was leaning
back in his chair, drowsing a little, his pencil still in his fingers. He opened
his eyes and fumbled at his lips. “I was just adding up sales,” he mumbled.

“Good,” Edward said cheerfully. He sat down at the chair on the other
side of the desk. His father and Baynes shared a desk. “There’s something
I want to talk over with you. Father. It’s been on my mind a good bit.
You know I don’t like talking until I see through a problem.” With this he
plunged into the heart of the matter. Better to get it over with!

“I won’t say Baynes has influenced me,” he concluded. “Yet in a way
he has, too. Baynes has something to contribute to the business. Father-
something that neither you nor I have— some sort of flair, I suppose! I know
a good book when it’s brought to me, and I can make a nice thing of
type and binding and all that, but I can’t nose out books and Baynes can.
From asking about, I find that publishers need someone like that. It’s lucky,
maybe, that we have him in the family. He seems to have found someone
already— fellow named Harrow.”

He made his tone light to counteract the gathering heaviness of his
father’s ash-white brows. “Maybe you trust Baynes in New York,” his
father said, “but I don’t— not with that wife of his. She’s not like the one
you got. Sandra’s another piece of goods.” He shook his head and his eyes
were dark. “Ducks and drakes,” he muttered. “Carryings on! Cocktail
parties— that’s the latest thing, I hear. All charged to expenses—”

THE ' EONG' LOVE

559

'I’ll see to that,” Edward said firmly. He did Bot tell Ms father that he
was begiBning to iinderstaBd that a small amount of getting about was,
perhaps a good thing in, the book business. He called it getting about, mi:
he was more than willing that Baynes should • undertake it. He had at-
tended a few such gatherings on his rare visits to New York aB,d he had
disliked them intensely.' Yet' it troubled him that he saw there the heads
of firms much larger. and more important than his own. They were solid
men and he could not' Imagine they enjoyed any more than he did the
strange drinks and fancy bits of bread and filling. Especially did he dislike
the women writers. Thank God that his only woman author at present
was an old lady of sixty, who wrote youthful little stories for children. He
considered them trivial and yet they sold well and they made up into
pretty books. She had paid for the first one herself as a present to her
grandchildren and when it went into the fourth edition, he offered to put
the next one into the trade. But he liked to have it said that Haslatt’s was
a man’s publishing house.

His father had sat frowning and ruminating. Now he suddenly banged
the ledger shut. *T know very well you and Baynes run things to suit
yourselves,” he said bitterly. 'T ought to be dead, too, like old Mather.
The country belongs to the young these days. There’s no respect left for
the old, whatever sense they’ve got. It’s a queer thing that a man spends
his life getting a little wisdom together somehow and then it’s not wanted.
Young folk think they’re born with all the wisdom.”

Edward did not at once answer these too familiar remarks. He sat silent
for a moment and suddenly he had his inspiration. 'That’s a nice thing
for you to say, just when I was about to suggest something to see how you
like it.”

His father looked at him sidewise, his eyes frosty under his brows,
"Well?” he drawled. "What’s the next big idea?”

"WTiat do you say to changing the name of the firm to Haslatt and
Sons?” Edward asked.

His father stared at him, "Leave old Mather out?”

"He is out, isn’t he?” Edward replied. "Every bit as much as Loomis—”

"Hm,” his father said, "I’ll have to think a bit”

"But why, Father?” Edward urged. “After all, it was only a printing
shop when Mather was here. It’s you and I who have built the book busi-
ness, and now Baynes has come in,”

"It’s true that Mather didn’t like the books,” his father conceded.

"We are really making a little on them, Father,” Edward went on.
"Everybody says you can’t make millions on books, but it’s a steady re-
spectable business— something more, too, I think, than just business.”

"Business is all I want out of it,” his father growled with a return to
hostility.

"Well, it’s not all I want out of anything,” Edward said stoutly. "I don’t
want to be just a businessman. I want some of the good things of Hfe,

AMERICAN - TRIPTYCH

too-some of the arts and some of the thoughts and some of the friends
that making books brings me. I can’t write books myself, I know, but I
like to take what others write, if it’s good, and give it a life of its nwn.
That’s important— a business if you like, but still it’s something more. A
writer would be helpless if he couldn’t get his manuscript made into a book.
Shakespeare would have been forgotten by now, if it hadn’t been for some
printer-publisher like us.”

His father stared at him. “What’s come over you?” he inquired. “I never
heard you talk so fancy.”

“Trying to convince you,” Edward said, and grinned. “But it’s what I
think and feel, nevertheless.”

They sat silent for a moment, as they often did. The sunshine from the
narrow window fell across Mark Haslatt’s head and turned his thick stiff
white hair to snow. He had grown thin and dry in the years that had
passed and something dour in his nature had become plain upon his
wrinkled face. He hated to grow old and yet he had to grow old. There
was no compensation for him in age. Sometimes he looked at his wife
across the breakfast table, the children all gone and only the two of them
left, and she looked so old that he was frightened. Ten years ago she had
been heavy and sound, a kindly woman with a scolding tongue, which
he had continually resented, and now she had grown into a thin mild silent
old woman. Sometimes he thought her mind was not what it had been
and this frightened him more than anything. Maybe his own mind wasn’t
what it had been. Nobody would tell him, of course. His two sons would
go on, as smooth as cream, managing everything and telling him nothing.
But he’d kept his hands on the accounts just the same. He wasn’t too old
yet to know when the figures were in the red.

“Then shall it be Haslatt and Sons, Father?” Edward asked.

He saw his father start, as though he had been dreaming. “Oh, I suppose
it might as well be,” he said half grumbling. “After all, it is Haslatt and
Sons, you might say.”

“Exactly,” Edward said briskly and he got up. “It’s time for your lunch,
isn’t it? Fii go home with you, if you don’t think it’ll upset Mother.”

“It won’t,” his father said. He lifted himself up by the arms of his chair,
found his hat and Edward held his coat. A few minutes later they were
going down the elevator together. “Your mother don’t look so good,” his
father was saying. “I wish you’d take the chance to see what you think.”

“I will, Father,” Edward promised.

They fell into silence again. A few acquaintances passed them and
neither of them talked before outsiders. But silence was easy. Edward was
realizing again, as he had begun to do in the last few years, that his father
was an old man. There was something very pathetic about age. It fell
upon a man like a disease, and it was incurable. He imagined his father’s
secret dismay as he found himself less able each year than he had been
the year before, his strength fading, his mind less alive. And there was

THE LONG LOVE

561

nothing to do! How cruel was God-i£ there was a God! Edward still went
to church every Sunday with his family and they all sat together in the
Haslatt pew. He continued to do this even though a profound doubt was
invading his soul, a doubt that he steadily refused to face. He put it aside
now and considered what practical means there might be of comforting
his parents for the loneliness of old age. Consideration, of course, and the
sparing of every hurt, but this was not enough. There ought to be pleasures
in old age. Surely every period of life had its compensations, if one could
ind them.

People had to be taught how to find pleasure. Perhaps that was the true
purpose of education~to help the individual discover the pleasure of being
his age. So Edward mused, allowing his mind the liberty it naturally took"
unless compelled to labor. And then he thought of his daughter Mary,
Louise could never teach her anything about pleasure! A crime this, that
his sister should be allowed teaching! Thank God that Margaret still
laughed easily.

The noon sun was warm, and along the street children were snatching a
few minutes’ play between school and their meal. The front door of the
house was open and in the hall there was the smell of roast beef from the
open kitchen door.

“Mother!” Mark Haslatt shouted. “Ed’s here for dinner!” He turned to
his son. “I’ll bet she’s in the kitchen, doing the work while the hired girl
looks on. I can’t get her to rest.”

His mother came to the kitchen door untying her apron. Her wrinkled
face cheered as she saw her son. “Why, this is real nice, Edward. Wait
till I hang up my apron. What’s the matter you’ve come home?”

He bent to kiss her dry cheek. “Nothing. Just thought I’d see how you
are.” ' ■

“Fine and dandy,” she replied. “I do hope the beefs not too done. The
girl likes it like leather. Want to wash up?”

“I’ll go upstairs,” Edward said.

He mounted the stairs to his old room. Everything was exactly as it al-
ways had been. Even the bed was made up, as though he were to sleep
there tonight. It was like coming back into a warm outgrown shell, and
something of his boyhood fell upon him again. He washed his hands at
the old-fashioned stand, pouring the water from the ewer into the basin.
The house had a bathroom, but his mother had kept the washstands in
the bedrooms.

He went downstairs in a few minutes and his parents were waiting for
him in their chairs and the girl was putting the roast on the table.

“Hello, Gladys,” he said,

“Howdy, Mr. Haslatt,” the girl answered. She was a farmer’s daughter,
pallid and freckled, and her sandy hair was in an elaborate braid. Ten
years ago she would have sat at the table with the family but now she did
not. The Haslatts had moved up in the town, and Mrs. Haslatt knew better.

562

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

She was still president of the Women’s Christian Temperanee Unions and
they met regularly here at the house once a month, important in the knowl-
edge that their work had been successful Edward never discussed Prohibi«
tion with his mother. Old Thomas Seaton had made him feel the folly of
forbidding people what they seem determined to do, and the atmosphere of
that house was wholly opposed to this one. Thomas Seaton drank as much
as ever and fumed at the trouble of getting his liquor, and Tom Seaton
had gone into the bootlegging business in a gentlemanly way. That is, he
arranged for imports of Scotch whisky. Edward imagined that his mother
knew all this, but she, too, did not mention it.

She watched the carving of the roast with anxious gravity. His father
was not an expert carver, and she could not rest until she had made sure
that the grain of the meat ran opposite to his knife. He had sharpened his
knife carefully and he began to cut big thin slices and the red juice ran
out. She sighed, relieved. “It’s a lovely roast—I’m glad you came today,
Edward. How’s Margaret and the children?’^

“Ail well,” Edward said mildly. “Margaret picked her first daffodil bud
today.”

“Did she?” Mrs. Haslatt replied. Her mind was occupied now with the
baked potatoes that Gladys was handing around. “Take the big one, Ed-
ward—you’re looking thin.”

“You’re never satisfied with the way I look,” he grumbled amiably. But
he took the big potato, dripping with butter.

“Did you put that dressing on the greens like I told you?” Mrs. Haslatt
inquired of Gladys.

“Oh, my soul and body,” the girl groaned and setting the potatoes on
the table she fied toward the kitchen.

“Her memory is no longer than her nose,” Mrs. Haslatt remarked.

“Her nose is long enough,” Mr. Haslatt said. “It’s like her father’s. I
always say that old Babcock’s nose is as long as from here to Jerusalem.”

“I’m sure Gladys tells her family every single thing we do,” Mrs. Haslatt
said, sighing.

Edward smiled. “Well, you don’t do anything very bad.”

“Has little Tom lost that eye tooth yet?” Mrs, Haslatt demanded after
they had eaten for a few minutes.

“He has, and I know it only because he expected a dime under his
pillow and I forgot it,” Edward confessed.

His father laughed. I’ll bet he didn’t let up on you until he got it.”

“He didn’t,” Edward said.

“That little Tom is a real smart boy,” his mother exclaimed. “I know
you don’t like greens, Edward, but these are something new—broccoli, it’s
called. We get so tired of spinach, now that your father can’t digest
cabbage.”

It was the desultory talk of the old days but it was easy and com-
fortable. The dining room was warm and the smell of the food whetted Ms

THE LONG LOVE '

563 ;

appetite.^ He took two small feathery rolls 'and buttered them heavily. He
liked bemg here alone sometimes with his father and mother. They had
been kind parents to him and he had forgotten the ways that had irritated
him when he was ^growing up. Now he simply felt that, they were good
and that they loved hinij and that the walls of' home 'were solid here. He
wanted Ms children to feel the same way about Ms own house.

" ®^Baynes wants to live' in New York,”' his father said suddenly.

Mrs. Haslatt dropped her fork. “For goodness sake-what for?”,

“He thinks we need a New York office— get new au'thors and so on/*
■Edward said, taking' another roll from the plate of hot ones that Gladys
.was, passing.

Mrs. Haslatt waited untE the girl had left the. room. “Seems to me
you’ve got as many books as you can manage a’ready. I couldn’t read that
last one, The Singed F/ower— wasn’t it?”

“It’s beginning to sell, though,” Edward said. The Singed Flower was a
book from a writer he’d found in England, a man named Peter Pitt. He
had not understood the book, either, but he had caught a vague feeling
from it, as of music in the distance. Margaret had read it three times.

“I don’t dare think of Baynes and Sandra in New York,” his mother
was saying. “Why, they’ll spend money like water-the two of them hand
in glove! I wish Baynes had a little more character with his wife. He’s
just putty. Sometimes it’s real disgusting.”

“I guess we’re all putty when it comes to our women,” Mark Haslatt
said and smEed faintly,

Mrs. Haslatt took mEd offense. “Now, Father, I don’t know what caE
you have to say that. I’ve taken good care to keep my place in the house.”

“Oh, weE— it’s only a joke.”

“A mighty poor one!”

“Don’t fight, you two,” Edward said amiably. “It’s a bad example to
your children.”

“There now, Mother,” Mr. Haslatt exclaimed with feeble mischief.
“Don’t I tell you?”

“Oh, shut up, you—” Mrs. Haslatt said with heavy humor. “Is Tom
Seaton acting as bad as ever?”

“I haven’t seen him in a month,” Edward replied. His wife’s brother
carried, in this house, the burden of his mother’s disapproval In spite of
the double marriages, the two families had remained apart, meeting only
at formal occasions. Edward had grown at home in the Seaton house, but
Margaret would never be quite at home here. The reason for this, Edward
was well aware, was that his mother had always to approve before she
could welcome and she could not approve either of her sons’ wives. She
knew, although she would not acknowledge even to herself, that the Seaton
family was higher socially in Chedbury than the Haslatts, but she main-
tained in her own mind the belief that the Haslatt famEy had a virtue in
its soundness that could not be matched by any Seaton. There had never

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

been a ditinlcard among the Haslatts and never a divorce. Moreover,
Haslatts were churchgolng and the SeatonS' were not“Or at least only lr«
regularly.

Baynes that we’ll only try it for a year,” Edward was saying,
he can bring in enough business to cover his own salary and the extra
overhead, then FIl consider it further.”

; His father noticed the “I,” instead of “we,” and did not speak. It was
only a sign, unconscious, that Edward thought of himself as the head of the
whole business, but it thrust one more thorn into the older man’s heart.

“WeU, I can’t take responsibility for it,” he said under his breath.
“What’s the dessert, Mother?”

“Apple pie,” she said promptly, “and I made it myself, for Gladys makes
a crust an inch thick and like a piece of rubber. It’s sinful to waste good
food like that”

The pie came on, still hot, and when Mrs. Haslatt cut it the fragrance
of sugar and cinnamon mingled with that of the apples.

“What a dinner!” Edward murmured. “I shan’t be able to work for an
hour.”

“No more you shouldn’t,” his mother said robustly. Her dry cheeks had
grown faintly red and she cut large slices of the pie and passed them
proudly. “There’s the cream in that luster jug—or would you rather have
cheese?”

“I’ll take cheese,” Edward said, and helped himself to the square of
yellow sharp cheese.

He was beginning to feel well fed and relaxed. Of course it would be
folly to eat like this every day. His own luncheons were frugal affairs, and
he dined at night. But he liked good food and knew that he did and he
was rigorous with himself about his waistline. Only when he came home,
as now, did he let himself eat as he had when he was a boy.

“I believe we’re going to have a little boom in business,” he said to his
father. “Things look good. That’s one reason why we can let Baynes have
some head.”

“The Republicans’ll be in for a change,” his father agreed,

“Poor old Wilson,” Edward said.

“I don’t feel sorry for him one bit,” his mother protested. “He was
getting us mixed up in ever5^ing-“he’s mixed himself, I’m sure. They say
he’s kind of lost his mind.”

“I don’t believe that,” Edward replied. He did not tell his parents that
he had voted steadfastly for Wilson each four years. The man was decades
ahead of the nation, a man who saw over the mountains into the future.
Old Thomas Seaton had finally convinced him of that. But it could never
be explained to his parents. What change in him his marriage to Margaret
had wrought! He smiled at his mother. “I can’t eat another bite.”

“You’ve eaten real good,” she said fondly. “Now you don’t have to go
ri^t away, do you? Father always takes a little snooze.”

THE LONG' LOVE

565

lie should, ;bet I mmto’t^yet,” Edward said.'^Jaiie Hobbs will be
counting the minotes that Fm

^ “Oh, that old, maid,”: his mother said tolerantly. She regarded all tinmar-
ried women as freaks. Then she frowned slightly. “Edward, I wish Louise
would' get married.”

No one in the offing?” he inquired, folding his napkin and slipping it
into his old ailver ring.

“She’s so closemouthed,” his mother complained,

I think she 11 marry late,” Edward said to comfort her, “Maybe some-
one older 'than herself.”

“She ought to get married before she’s thirty,”

“Well, she has a few years to go.”

He rose and leaned over her. “Thanks for a grand dinner. I shan’t be
able to eat tonight.”

“I hope Margaret won’t blame me for that,” his mother said, bristling
slightly.

“She never blames anybody for anything,” he said carelessly. “Except
Mary, maybe.”

“She is hard on that child,” his mother exclaimed. “Fve noticed it, too
-though to me Mary’s the best child you have.”

“Mothers and daughters,” his father murmured. He had risen and was
stretched out now on the old leather couch under the window.

“Oh, hush up,” Mrs. Haslatt cried. “I was always nice to Louise, Fm
sure.”

“You never paid her the mind that you did the boys,” Mr. Haslatt
returned.

“Whafs the matter with you two?” Edward demanded, “i don’t remem-
ber your arguing so much when I was young.”

“We’ve got more time for it now,” his father said. His eyes were closed
but his lips twitched with secret laughter.

“Old men get so independent,” his mother complained.

“It’s our last chance,” his father retorted.

“Oh, you old bum,” his mother said with affection.

Edward laughed. “Weil, if you’re having a good timel See you later,
Father.”

He went into the hall and put on his hat and coat and glancing back
into the dining room he saw his mother sipping her coffee. His father
was beginning to snore softly. There was an air of warm content in the
room, and he realized how much he loved his old parents. He went back
to his office, his heart wrapped in tenderness, and wondered if some day
his children would look at him when he was old and love him in the same
deep amused fashion. So one generation held the other by the heart.

He went to his own home at the end of the day and the sense of per-
manence clung to him still. He in his time, and in his approaching prime,

■AMERICAN TRIPTYCH.

was fulfiilmg Ms place. The early spring evemng was cold and he held
the collar of Ms gray topcoat about Ms throat. He had left his muffler at
home this morning, deceived by the soft spring sky, but now the large
white clouds had been blown over the hills on the wings of a north wind.
There might still be frost tonight if the wind went down. He walked against
the wind toward his house and saw it looming solidly against its background
of trees. It was square and the roof was low and the railed porches were
white in the evening light. Ten years had deepened the shadows of the
woods, and trees that he and Margaret had planted in their first spring
together were saplings no longer. The elms leading to the house were be*
ginning to make a noble column. He walked between them up the brick-
laid walk and one by one he saw the lights of his home begin to shine.
That was Margaret. He knew her trick of going from room to room as
soon as the sun had set, and turning on the lights. She did not like the
twilight, and the children had learned from her to want the lights as soon
as the land turned gray.

Eleven years and the house had grown to be as much a part of him as
Ms own body. The thought of himself and Margaret living there together
with their children sent his ambition soaring. He wanted everything for
them. Other men could want amusement and travel and fame and money,
but whatever he wanted was for them— for Margaret first, and then for
the children. Comfort and beauty and richness he would work for that he
might bestow ail upon them.

He opened the door of the wide deep hall and let Mmself in and there
was Margaret, lighting the last lamp,

“Giver of light, he murmured. Then his heart quickened. He caught a
wild sweet gleam in her eye.

“Know why I love you?” she inquired in a matter-of-fact voice that did
not deceive him.

“Anything new?” he asked, hanging up his coat in the closet under the
stairs.

“Maybe I’ve never told you,” she replied.

“Still hiding things from me, are you?” he retorted.

He put his right arm around her shoulders and tipped her head back
with Ms left hand. “Well, why do you love me?” he inquired.

“Because never once in all these eleven years have you reminded me of
electricity bills when I turn on the lights at night!”

“Is that ail?” He pretended to be disappointed.

“But that’s wonderful!” she exclaimed.

He kissed her lips again gently, tasting their warmth. They were soft
and full. Strange how he could tell from the first touch of her lips!

He let her go, knowing now that she did not like to be held too long.
He had learned to let her go before she freed herself from him. Ah, what
a deal he had learned about loving her! He had been hurt in the old days
when they were first married because she twisted herself free so soon. He

THE LONG LOVE

wanted everything to, last forever. Now he knew that anything cotild ■ be-
come her cage, even his love. He turned to'the stair and began to mount
slowly to Ms room and she stood watching him. ■

.“Want another reason why I love you?’ she asked. '

, He paused and she came and laid her hands against the paneling of the
stair and he looked down into her blue eyes. “Another reason?” ■

'“One more. Ifs thk-you never turn out the lights that I put, on.”

“Why should I?” he parried. Only some intuition he had .not understood
had taught him never to put out a light she had lit. He had often wanted'
to do it~longed to, in fact, within his prudent soul It was folly to burn a
dozen lights. 'Then his ceaseless determination to' hide nothing from her
forced him to tell her this. He leaned over the banisters, and looking down
at her he said with half-shamed honesty, “Margaret-look here, i ought
to tell you— Fve always wanted to turn out the lights. It seemed extravagant
to have the whole house lit.”

She flung her laughter up at him like a bright bubble. “I know you’ve
wanted to turn them out. But you never have! Sometimes I thought, really
he will do it tonight— sometimes when you’ve been cross or we’ve had one
of our fights. But you never did.”

Her intensity warned him. He must not rush down to her and make love
to her. These were her approaches. He must withdraw a little, let her pursue
until she had committed herself. Oh, he had learned!

“Silly!” he said.

He went on up the stairs and she stood looking after him and he, know-
ing she was watching, went calmly on Ms way, his heart hammering against
his breastbone.

In his room he washed and changed his clothes and then carefully chose
a tie of wine red for Ms white shirt. She had put on her blue velvet and
he had seen it when he came into the house. At first he had been stupid
about noticing the small signs but now he had learned. Long ago when he
had sworn to have no other love beside her, it had come to him that the
variety all men craved could be found in Margaret, if he had the patience
and the wit to woo her manifold self.

And yet the evening routine went on as usual. He heard his baby daugh-
ter’s murmuring voice and going into the small room across the hall he
found her in her crib, bathed and fed and ready for sleep. She was pulling
the ears of a worn pink teddy bear and its nose was wet with her chewing.
When she saw him the teddy bear dropped and she smiled widely, en-
chanted with him.

“Daddee,” she murmured, in ecstasy. He picked her up gently and held
her to him and kissed the softness of her fragrant fat neck.

“Ow,” she said loudly and giggled. He understood that he needed a
shave.

“Thanks for reminding me,” he said conversationally and still holding
her he pranced about the room noiselessly and was rewarded by ripples of

568

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

laughter. So free was her laughter indeed that it ended in an attack of
hiccoughs which she enjoyed with fresh amazement, and to quiet her he had
to give her a drink of water which she then spat out on Ms clean shirt
bosom.' "

“Here, young woman,’’ he said with decision. He put her back In bed,
kissed her on both cheeks, restored her teddy bear and pulled the blond
cur! on the top of her head. Then he went to Ms room and shaved and
changed his shirt again.

By the time he was ready to go downstairs Ms son Tom was coming
to look for Mm. And Mary opened the front door. He heard her first
inquiry, “Is Daddy home yet, Mother?” Bless her for always making this
her first question! She came running up the stairs and burst into Ms room.
Tom was behind her. He looked like old Thomas, a square-set red-headed
fellow. Mary was dark. Edward had unknowingly bestowed upon her Ms
own brown eyes and she had Margaret’s curly dark hair. But she had none
of the brave freedom of Margaret’s carriage. She walked timidly, always
a little unsure of welcome. It must be part of Ms job as father, he told
himself, to take the shadow from her, so that she moved as one who
walked in light. Strange that Margaret could not see what he meant when he
tried to tell her!

He put out his arms first to his daughter, and then felt Ms son seize Ms
arm and pull it away. “Here— ladies first,” he said.

“Mary isn’t a lady,” Tom said scornfully. “She’s on’y a girl.”

“Lady to you, young man!”

Tom clung to his arm. “Daddy, kin I have a two wheeler? My tricycle’s
broken. And I’m too big. I could give it to Sandy when she’s high enough.”

“Oh, gosh, old man. I can’t just promise without talking with Mother.”

Mary had said not a word. He felt her clinging to Mm tightly, her arms
about his waist, head against his breast.

“How are you, sweetheart?” he said. “Have a mce day?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Let’s go down to dinner—”

He had won a point with Margaret about that. At the Seaton house
the children never had dinner with the family. Supper came first for them
and then there had been dinner for the parents and their guests.

“All very well for the English,” Edward had said. “They don’t want
their cMldren about, but I do,” They had compromised and after their
fifth birthdays the children came to dinner.

He took his place tonight at the head of the table and smiled across a
pot of spring flowers at Ms wife. Hattie brought in small bowls of soup
and set them down and went out again. The family meal had begun and it
went on as usual and as he hoped it always would, as long as he lived. He
listened to what the children had to say and he made replies to please
them and to correct them, and Margaret joined in with her usual vigor.
She had heeded his words of the morning and she was tender of Mary,

569

THE LONG LOVE

refraining, he saw, from correcting her for smaU mistakes in table man-
ners. It was Me any other evening and yet he was perfectly aware that it
was^one of their rare evenings, and that in spite of the presence of the
cliilareii he and Margaret were alone with each other.

“I had dinner today with Father and Mother,” he told her. “Roast beef

and all that— I shan’t be able to eat much tonight.”

■ “Roast beef and what?” Tom asked with interest.

, “Apple pie,” he replied. ■

We have chicken and stewed peaches,” Margaret said.

Foolish little words and all the time he was aware of a slumberous soft-
ness in her eyes. Did the children feel something magic in the air? Had
he ever as a child' felt this glinting silvery cobweb being woven across the
table between his parents? He:had not been aware of it, bat then perhaps
In that house there had been no such weaving. A profound reticence lay
between the generations in any decent house, and his was a decent house
and so had been his father’s. Here was something he had discovered;
when Margaret was witty and her laughter sharp, then, though he laughed!
he withdrew, aware of her declaration of solitude. But when she laid aside
wit and did not make laughter, he could come near her and she would not
repulse him. Oh, the misery of her repulse! He still was wary of it, even
after years. For she, the woman, was essentially solitary and he was not,
and this was what astonished him. She had welcomed their children, one by
one, and she was a tender and physical mother, suckling them at her breast.
And yet when the time came to wean them she was ruthless and eager to
be cut off from them. He had not understood this when it had first hap-
pened with Mary and he had accused her of coldness to her child. Then
before Tom was bom he had occasion to observe a little dog, a female
spaniel he had reared. She had given birth to pups and had nursed them
day and night, never leaving them until suddenly one day when they ran
to suckle her, she had turned on them and had bitten them and they had
gone yelping off, heartbroken. She was through with them and her breast
was dry and she had to force them from her and recover herself.

He had not told Margaret of the parable, but he had pondered it, re-
membering always his vow that he would make his marriage the main-
stream of his life. How large that promise had been he had not realized
when he gave it, but he could not take it back. And he was aware, too, of
her promise which she had given. He never heard her speak a wish to
separate herself from him. Yet he knew at last that there were times when
she could not bear him near her, even as she had not wanted the child at
her breast any more.

At first he had been wounded to the very core of his being and in
those early days so foolish as to accuse her at times of not loving him.
She declared the accusation was folly and yet she could not explain why
she did not want him near her. “Leave me done,” she had repeated. “Just
leave me alone, will you, Ned?”

^57CI-

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

Margaret?”. ; ' ' ■

^^How do I know? Only don’t touch me.”

' He had wished, once' or twice, that he could confess his troubles to
other men with wives, but his stubborn delicacy forbade it. Had he loved
her less he might have spoken but he could not reveal: her to another’s
' eyes, either in the spirit or in the flesh. So, he held back his anger, and once
when she had shut the door against him he accepted his humiliation and
determined to wait until she came to him. But her pride was equal to his.
She did not come, and angry now at himself, he had approached her
again, although only with words.

Indeed that it might be no more than words, he had chosen the living
room one night after dinner. It was before their trip to England. Mary
was then a baby and she had been put early to bed. He had been reading
Tennant’s second manuscript, he remembered, and Margaret was playing
the piano quietly, all her music subdued. He had sat watching her straight
and graceful back, her cheek half turned toward him. Then he had spoken.
“Margaret!”

At the sound of his voice, though he had made it gentle, she had started
violently and her hands crashed the chord.

“Yes?” Her voice was cheerful enough.

“Shall we talk a little while?”

He was not prepared for the joy with which she turned to him at once.
“Oh, Ned, will you?”

He had laid his manuscript on the table and she came and sat in the
chair opposite him, “Margaret, if you wanted talk why haven’t you said
so?”

“But you’ve been a stone!” she cried softly.

He was aghast. “I? You’ve been miles away from me!”

She shook her head and gazed at him speechlessly, and drew her upper
lip down between her teeth.

“You’ve changed since we’ve been married,” he had accused her. “You
used to say anything to me.”

Still she did not speak.

“See?” he said, angry in spite of his determination against anger. “You
don’t help me now. What is the matter between us?”

The delicacy of her skin, white against her black hair, was one of her
beauties and she had flushed deeply. “I can never get away from you,” she
had said, and to his horror he saw her begin to tremble, her hands quiver-
ing so that she clasped them tightly in her lap and her lips trembling.

She wanted to get away from him! He had waited for a moment until
the first surge of hurt died down. Then he had said as quietly as he could,
“But you should have told me if you wanted to go away. Would you like
to go home for a visit? Hattie can do for me. Or would you like to go to
Boston or New York«-even England, for that matter?”

“We’ve always said we’d go to En^and together,” she said

THE , LONG LOVE

571

■ The absurdity of , their posltioG, face to ..face, aod yet striiggliiig to find
each other .made. Mm ashamed. “It would be easier if we could forget
that we’re married,.’’ he said with sudden inspiration. “Lefs imagine that
we are as we were before.”

,... .She., smiled, and he saw her wh.o.le body relax. She stopped trembling
and then she laughed. “Ned, that’s clever of you. Lefs, do more-Iefs
pretend we’re talking about two other people-not you and me-«just a he
and a she, somewhere, anywhe.re, anybody, just married and with a small
quite nice baby, everything really wonderful, a lovely .house, their bills paid
-well, very nearly paid. There’s my new suit, of course, and I know it
was far too expensive but, I had to have -it for some reason or other-at
..the moment I don’t care about it now, and I wish I hadn’t'had it altered.”

“Itli be paid, for this month,” he said, “and so let’s call it paid for. All
right He and she—”

He entered into the fiction somewhat stiffly, feeling downright silly. It
would have been easier just to speak straight, but perhaps It would not.
Anyway, let it be as she wanted. “What about this woman, She?” he in-
quired. “Does she still love her husband or d.oesn’t she? That’s what he
keeps asking himself. Maybe he overpersuaded her. After all, he is a stub-
born fellow, this He, and he remembers that he insisted— somewhat— upon
marrying her.”

“Oh, but how can he think she doesn’t love him?” Margaret cried. “She
feels she is just beginning to know how to love him. That is-sometimes
she feels that way.”

“Not ail the time?”

“She adores him a good deal of the time, she’s getting proud of him
because she sees he has a lot of brains, really— more than she thought. Her
father said to her only the other day— Tou’ve got something in that chap.*
But there are times when she wants to be by herself.”

“Because she hates him?” he asked.

“No,” she replied gravely, “That’s what she’s beginning to see— not be-
cause she hates him but because she just wants sometimes to be alone
and whole, complete in herself. She doesn’t want to share herself ail the
time. Most of the time she does want to, though.”

He was looking at her who was bis wife, his own, and he felt the rending
of flesh. “He never wants to be alone, away from her,” he told her.

She was trembling again a very little. “Oh, but that’s because he’s
different.”

“He’s only human— too human, perhaps.”

“It’s not that— they’re both human beings, Ned, and there they are tbe
same.”

“Then she’s not afraid of him?”

“Oh, no— really she finds Mm even charming— as a human being!”

Now they were looking at each other steadily. He put the next question.

“Does she feel there’s a part of him that is not human?”

572

AMERICAN TRIETYGH

. siie doesn’t like to say it’s not human—

‘‘But it Isn’t?”

/' ‘‘Perhaps it’s just—natural,”

“Nature being different from human?”

.■-“Yes.”

Again the long pause- and again his question first “And she hasn’t this
nature?”

“Yes— yes—she has.”

“Then— why does she draw away from him?”

She was thinking intensely and her dark narrow brows were drawn to-
gether over her honest eyes. “She doesn’t know-but perhaps it’s this. M
him she feels the nature is something separate from him— always there,
waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“For a chance.”

“A chance?”

She had ignored the question in his voice and hurried on as though she
might not hold the words she wanted if she did not keep her thought run-
ning in them. “In her, the nature is all mingled with everything. It’s not
separate— it doesn’t wait— in fact, most of the time she doesn’t know it’s
there. It is only when something she sees in him seems especially endear-
ing— oh, sometimes when she sees his profile is really good, or that Ms
shoulders are broad— or maybe when he is simply thinking and she sees
his face in a new way— oh, I don’t know— but anyway, then she feels— nature
in her, too. But it doesn’t separate itself from everything else in her and it
isn’t physical, at first. And it doesn’t wait, you know, Ned. It has to be
called to.”

He had leaned toward her, and would not go near to touch her,

“My dear, but how am I to know?”

She had shaken her head again, and he had been puzzled by that new
and shy Margaret. They had talked about everything in the world except
this He and this She, who were their secret selves.

“Could you make some small slight sign to me, darling? If you could—”

She shook her head.

“I’d promise not to hurry you,” he said quietly. “You’d be the one to
make the sign,”

“I might be ashamed to.”

“Ashamed— with me? Oh, no, Margaret!”

She had not moved her eyes from his face. Still leaning toward her and
still careful not to touch her or go near her, as though a butterfly poised
upon her knees that must not be frightened away, he had made his voice
tender and grave. “Let’s not talk any more. I think I understand what
you’ve said. And I’ll wait.”

She moved quickly and the butterfly seemed to fly away, a thing of gold

THE LONG LOVE

573

and blue. “But I don’t want to feel you waiting all the time for me to-that’s
what puts me off, Ned!”

How clumsy he had been— the one wrong word! He shrugged his shoul-
ders. “Then I shan’t wait, my dear. After all, you forget I’m a busy man
and there’s plenty on my mind, beyond sleeping with my beautiful wife,
pleasant as that is. I’ll keep my mind on other things, and I’ll be grateful

to you for what you freely give.” ,

He had picked up his maauscript agam and had begun to read it,
trying to quell the beating of his heart. He was angered and hurt and
proud and yet he. knew that he loved her exactly' the same. So they had sat
for soine fifteen minutes and then she had come to him and kissed the top
of his head delicately.

^^Good night, Ned—and thank you.”

"'Good night, dear. Ill be a little late tonight, i have this to finish.”

She had gone away and he had put down the manuscript and had sal
long, pondering deeply upon the mystery of marriage. It would have been
easy to have his own will, as men did, but then she would escape him
altogether. He could not live with her shell. He must have her whole, and
that meant that he must have her willing. She could escape him, even
when she lay in his arms. He had felt her spirit leave him, and there was
only her body beside him and then though it was warm and fragrant, it
was dead. Ah, that was where she had him—it was where woman always
had man, if he truly loved her. And then there was no pleasure in her for
him, not unless he was a clod, which he, Edward Haslatt, was not. There
was some strange inner morality in this act of sex. It was moral only when
he felt it right and good and he felt it right and good only when her spirit
did not escape him. The sin was in the flesh— no, the sin was when flesh
was without the spirit. If he were content with her flesh, then it was insult
to her who was his love, and whom he loved wholly.

He began dimly to understand the meaning of love. Put to selfish use, it
did not function. It had to be unselfish in order to satisfy even selfishly.
Had he been of coarser fiber, he might have put woman aside, as a puzzle
not to be seriously understood. But then had he been of coarser fiber, he
would not now be married to Margaret, He was what he was, and they
were inseparably married, unless he drove her spirit from her body.
Then wandering and alone, it might never return to him or to his house. The
thought of this had put him into a cold terror, and he had sworn to himself
a vow that he was never to break, a vow as solemn as his marriage vows,
and indeed comprehended in them, as he had come at last to perceive.
He would possess her whole or not at all

He had kept his vow all these years since it was made and he kept it
tonight. He had learned, however, that there was always a moment, which
if he did not seize, he lost. The delicate manifestations that she made of her
mood enchanted him, and his enchantment he had at first allowed to con-
tinue too long for her modesty. For if she perceived that she was leading,

574 ...

AMEEICAN , TEIPTYGH

she mstaHtly withdrew, and then he had lost her' again. :He could not woo:
her after she had withdrawn—it was too late. She evaded him. She gave that
final swift shake of her head that he dreaded. She began to talk of other
things or she took up a book. Positively' he^ must meet her at some point :
This point, he had discovered after a year or two of fumbling mistakes,
was as soon as she knew that he had understood her manifestation. From
the moment she saw that she had made clear to him her mood, then he
must take the lead and she must follow. Nor must he postpone too long
the consummation. His lead must follow her mood.

How many years it had taken him to learn these things! He had learned
them slowly and stupidly, he often told himself. Yet he was compelled to
learn them even for his own sake, for he was not a beast. He was above
simple lust. Then, having learned, he was tender with her and attuned to
her, and he was rewarded. In her content was his own fulfillment The
process had refined his sou! while it had sharpened his senses. He and
Margaret were so profoundly married, now at the end of eleven years,
that he felt, with triumph, that he had made a success of his marriage.
Had he been a different kind of man, a man without patience, without the
wit to perceive that a man could not be satisfied with a woman unless she
was satisfied with him, what loss to him! For he had not changed his whole
character or improved his most common faults. He was still easily wounded
and susceptible to jealousy, although he thought he had learned to hide it
from her. Jealousy she could not tolerate. Stubborn though he was, she had
frightened him half beside himself in the second year of their marriage.
One night Tom had come to dinner, bringing with him a young Irishman,
a blue-eyed, black-haired fool of a fellow, whose tongue was loose at both
ends and laced with wit. Margaret had abandoned herself to laughter dur-
ing dinner, and after dinner when Hattie brought in the coffee, she had
patted the place beside her on the couch.

“Come here I she had cried to Sean Mallory.

Edward had stood watching while the young Irishman sat down beside
Margaret. And then she would not look at him, after he had glared at
her, after her eyelashes had flickered at him. She had been gay and wild
and Tom had encouraged her, and Sean Mallory, quick to perceive the
young husband’s silence, had yet found it impossible to resist the gay girFs
voice, her sparkling provocative talk, her laughter.

When the two guests had gone silence fell as the door closed. Margaret
sat on the couch where she had been sitting all evening, and she looked
at him with hostility in her blue eyes. He had been confounded by the
change in her. It was like seeing a landscape upon a sunny day gone sud-
denly gray under a cloud. The shock broke his control.

“I can stand anything,” he had said to her between his teeth, “anything
except what’s physical.”

She had looked at him honc^y bewildered. “Physical?”

THE LONG LOVE

575 ;

^ .“That. you. asked,. Mm to^. com,e and sit down heside' you., where I was
going to sit— yoU' motioned him with your hand—”

She rose, electric with anger. Her eyes gleamed, her hair quivered,
her cheeks flamed “Now that is enough,” she said in a quiet and terrible
voice. “You will .make me despise you if you go on.”'

She had walked with dignity to the door and there she had tomed
“What you say is an insult.to me,” she declared, “I will not endure it, do
you hear me, Ned? If ever again you accuse me of being— physical— with a
man I don’t love, that day I will leave you,”-

She went' upstairs and he heard her door close. He followed, after a
miserable half hour in which he ostentatiously .wound the clock and locked
the doors 'and fed the cat .and put out all the lights downstairs. When he
tried the handle of her door it was locked. He spent a sleepless night,
telling himself that he was right to have spoken and that innocent though
she was, how was the Irishman to know that she was Innocent? How could
any man think her innocent when she was so beautiful?

He rose the next morning still angry and cold and she did not come
down to breakfast. When he went in to her room to kiss her, her lips were
lifeless and her eyes dark. She was unrepentant and he knew her well
enough already to know that she would never repent of anything she had
said or done and that she did not repent now. Very well, neither would
he repent. He had gone away to the day’s business, cold and hurt, and
when he came home he was very tired. He found her quiet and usual and
they had never spoken again of the matter.

But she had not forgotten it. He knew because years later, only last
year, indeed, when Sean Mallory having become a poet of almost flrst
water, he had mentioned casually that Hasiatt and Mather had a chance
to bid for his new book, Margaret had said nothing. She was arranging
roses in a bowl on a small table under the wide living-room window and
she had continued to choose one flower and then another. He had let the
bid go by and Livingstone Hail had published Fire in the NighL He had
brought home a copy of the book and had put it on the library table.
When she saw it she had taken it and thrown it into the wastepaper basket.
He had reproved her.

“Margaret, what folly— a new book, with good reviews!” He stooped to
pick it out of the basket again.

“Don’t put it on the table,” she had cried at him.

He had refused to yield to her. “I’ll take it back to the office and put It
on my own shelves,” he had said with dignity.

Afterward he remembered that long ago she had told Mm she liked
to speak out what she felt. “I don’t want to have to stop and think whetber
something is going to hurt your feelings—” That was what she had once
said. He had a vague sense that nevertheless she had learned to stop and
think about his feelings, and that she no longer spoke out. But he, too, had
learned if not to stop feeling yet to stop showing what he felt. In spite of

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

their dreams, their marriage had shaped itself out of what they were/ Theh
faults had made it, as well as their virtues. Well, it was good. He still
could not imagine himself loving any woman except Margaret.

A telegram from Baynes the next morning announced the certainty of
Lewis Harrow’s arrival, and in the late afternoon Edward went to meet the
train that was bringing, he hoped, the new author. This morning it seemed
settled that the firm was to be Haslatt and Sons and he had called up a
sign painter. In the afternoon he and his father had chosen the lettering
Haslatt and Sons, Publishers and Printers. His father had actuaiy been
excited and Edward was calm, in consequence, though in spite of new
pride. Now he wished the sign could be ready for tomorrow morning
when Lewis Harrow could see it. He smiled, half ashamed at his impa-
tience.

The train slowed to a stop at the Chedbury station. It was a local run-
ning out from Boston, and since Chedbury was next to the last station,
few people were aboard. It was easy to discover a thickset young man
who wore no hat and a shabby topcoat. He stood looking left and right,
and Edward drew near. ‘‘Mr. Harrow?”

“Lewis Harrow,” the young man said.

His intense eyes did not light under half-lowered lids nor did he smile.
He wore a young dark mustache and he carried a worn bag.

*T am Edward Haslatt.”

They shook hands and the young man began to speak in an uneven
staccato. “Good of you to come and meet me— yourself, I mean.”

“Chedbury is a small place and I can walk here to this station quite
easily,” Edward replied. “I am glad you can spend the night. The trolley
is only just around the comer.”

They walked away together, the young man with a slight limp, and at the
car Edward involuntarily lifted him slightly by the arm.

“Thanks,” the young man said. “I got a potshot in the leg in the war.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Edward said.

“It’s nothing— now.”

They sat in silence for a moment and then Edward began to talk, dif-
fidently. He was still shy before his authors, still, he feared, more printer
than publisher. Then he perceived that Lewis Harrow was even more dif-
fident than himself, and he laid hold of his pride and began to speak with
determination. “I hope you won’t be impatient with me if I take several
days, or more, in reading your manuscript. I read slowly— and perhaps
make up my mind slowly, too.”

“I don’t mind,” Lewis Harrow said indifferently. He was gazing out the
window, “It’s still beautiful country. I was afraid it had changed.”

“It’s nice,” Edward admitted. “Have you been here before?”

“Yes,” Harrow said. “But long ago.”

Edward looked out on the familiar landscape with complacent pleasure.

THE LONG LOVE

577

Most of the time he forgot it, but whee someone approved It, he remem-
bered that it was fine and Ms own. When he and Margaret were first mar-
ried he ^ had honestly made great effort to see as quickly as she did the
beauty . in iaiid and sky, but to his confusion she had soon detected his
effort and one day^ she had said plainly, though with good nature, ‘‘Don*!
pretend, will you, Ned! You needn’t care about the sunset.”

'Well, I do,” he had retorted. "I can see it’s beautiful as well as you,
but I can’t cry out over it”

"How does it make you feel?” she had asked curiously.

"Fm pleased my world contains it,” he had answered after some re-
flection.

"That’s well put,” she had said as though surprised. "Perhaps it says
more than you know.”

"Perhaps it does,” he had agreed.

Afterward it occurred to him that she lived in every moment entire as it
came, but he lived each moment as it was related to the past and the
future. Thus he did not see the sunset as only a splendid sight, but he saw
it in its place in the landscape of his home.

“You have a family?” Lewis Harrow was asking.

"A son and two daughters,” Edward replied, "all small, yet-the young-
est a baby.”

"I like children,” Harrow went on. "I hope yours will like me.”

"You’ll find Mary shy,” Edward replied. As always his heart flew to
protect this eldest child. "The others are ordinary enough—though their
mother would reproach me for putting it that way. One can’t say yet, as a
matter of fact, what the baby is. Fm fond enough of my son, but I can’t
see signs that he’ll set the world afire.”

Harrow laughed. "A practical man, though a father!”

Edward narrowed Ms eyes in a small smile. “I hope so,” he said dryly,
"Here’s our stop.”

They got out at the corner road and walked the brief distance to the
house. Edward said notMng, wanting to catch undiluted by irrelevant talk
the stranger’s first glimpse of the house. He paused cunningly just before
the road turned. "Just around the bend you’ll see where we live,” he said
carelessly. They made the turn and Harrow stopped to exclaim in honest
admiration, "What a house!”

"It was built by an Englishman, years ago,” Edward explained, taking
care to be casual. "His wife died and he went back to England just
about the time we were married. It was too big for us then, of course,
but—weli, we wanted it. My wife was used to space and I wanted to give
her what she’d had.”

"Is that she?” Harrow asked. They were walking on again.

"Yes.” They could see Margaret quite plainly now. She was cutting a
few daffodils.

"She looks young,” Harrow said.

578

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

year younger thaa I,”' Edward said. '

“You’re not old,” Harrow said, smiling.

“Only older tlian you,” Edward said, returning the smile.

They became aware that they were talking trivially and fell silent A
moment later they were at the gate and there stood Margaret in her blue
wool dress, her hands full of the yellow daffodils. Her black hair curled
about her face and her eyes in the light of the sunset were a startling blue.
Edward felt the old sting of physical jealousy and his palms tingled. Why
did she have to stand there looking as though she had suddenly come to
life?

“This is Lewis Harrow,” he said abruptly. “Harrow, this is my wife.”

Margaret put out her hand and the young man took it. “I hope you don’t
mind my saying you’re beautiful.”

Edward, surprised by this boldness, stared with displeasure at his guest,
and saw for the first time how strange was the color of his eyes, a yellowish
hazel. But before he could speak, Margaret said frankly, “I don’t mind a bit.
Do come in, both of you. Sandy’s caliing for you, Ned.”

The door of the house flew open and Mary darted out “Oh, Dad!” she
cried. “I thought you’d never come.” She flung her arms about his waist,
a brown-skinned, brown-eyed child whose hair was too long and dark for
the small anxious face.

“I told you I had to meet Mr. Harrow,” Edward said, hugging her.

“I told her, too,” Margaret said, “but she frets about everything.”

“Does she!” Harrow said half playfully, “How well I understand that!
I always fret”

“Do you?” Mary breathed. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Really awful!” Harrow agreed.

He seemed to have forgotten Margaret and Edward forgave him on
the instant. So seldom did anybody see his plain little daughter.

“What do you fret about?” Mary asked.

“Well, whether your father will like my book,” Harrow said mis-
chievously.

“Father!” Mary cried. “You will like his book, won’t you?”

“Mary, please go in and have your supper,” Margaret said suddenly.

“Isn’t she eating with us?” Edward asked.

His eyes met Margaret’s. “She and Tom are having their supper early
tonight,” Margaret said.

The evening passed. At each stage Edward watched Harrow not only
with his own eyes but through Margaret’s delaying, fluctuating feeling to-
ward the young man. Thus he knew that she was first horrified at Harrow’s
table manners. He buttered his bread slice whole and ate it so. He gnawed
the meat from his lamb chop and wiped his greasy hands shamelessly on
his napkin. Whatever he did was unconscious. Obviously he had never
been taught manners, nor had he observed them. This physical coarseness

mE LONG LOVE

'■S79

was balanced by a delicacy k feelmg and perception strange and qalcfc.
He lounged on tlie couch after dinner and shook his head at coffee. >*Keeps
me awake,” he declared, “^and sleep is important to me, I want my brain
crystal. in the morning.”. But .an hour later he.divked restlessness In Mar-
garet and he smiled at her boldly. '

«« You feel you’ve seen me before, don’t you?”
do,” she replied, “how did you know?”

“I feel you wondering.” ■

■ “Nonsense!”

“Of course I do,” he insisted. “It’s my business to feel what people are
thinking. Well, you have seen me before.”

His confident smile was not attractive but it was compellkg,

“Where?” Edward asked with caution.

Harrow gave a loud laugh. “Right here k Chedburyl”

“Wait,” Margaret said. “Let me think— ”

They waited, their eyes on her vivid thkkkg face.

“The only thing I can see is our old laundress. There’s somethkg about
you—”

“There is. Tm her son.”

“But her name was Hinkle.”

Lewis Harrow interrupted her. “Impossible name for a novelist! As soon
as Mother died I changed it. I’m Harrow now, legally.”

“You weren’t the boy who used to lug k the baskets for her?” she
asked.

“I was and am,” Harrow said without embarrassment

“Your face was always dirty.”

“Still is, a good deal of the time.”

“But how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Edward sat silent. The bright demand in Margaret’s voice, the directness
of her curiosity, had drawn a fearless response from the young man. He
had seen this happen again and agak between Margaret and some other
human bemg. She was irresistible when she wanted to be— and when the
other person was strong enough for it.

Lewis Harrow was strong and he felt no need for self-defense. He turned
now to Edward. “The novel I’ve got for you tonight is about war. I was
k it, of course. I have to get it out of my system. But Fve already begun
another.”

“That’s good news,” Edward said quietly. “It’s what a publisher wants
to hear— that there’s always another.”

It was his turn now, and he took it, and Margaret sat by, listening, her
eyes intense and her cheeks flushed, while they talked of the writing of
books,

“What do you thmk of him?” This Edward asked her when long past
midnight they were gettkg ready for bed.

580

AMEKICAN TRIPTYCH

■ depends on what he’s doing," she replied She took off the wrought-
gold necklace and the earrings which a few years ago he had bought to
match it. **When he’s eating he’s an animal. Maybe he’s an animal anyway.
But when he talks he makes me think of Beethoven."

“The two aren’t incompatible,” Edward murmured. He felt exhausted.
There was some force in Harrow that burned the oxygen out of the air.
A consuming sort of fellow-he didn’t want to be with him too much! There
was that manuscript lying on the table in the small study that adjoined the
bedroom. He did not intend to go near it tonight. He lay down in his bed
a few minutes later, and felt the sheets cool and grateful to his outstretched
legs. Margaret was already in her bed, and before he put out the light he
took his final look at her through the open door between their rooms. Five
years ago they had decided on separate rooms. She lay as always high on
two pillows, her soft black hair outspread. She wore a long-sleeved night-
gown and there were frills of lace over her clasped hands. Their eyes met
and smiled.

“Fd hate to be married to anybody except you,” she said sweetly.

“Thank you, my dear,” he replied.

They had already kissed and so he put out the light He heard the small
sigh she gave before she slept and tiben there was silence. She was ex-
hausted, too.

He lay for perhaps an hour, waiting for sleep. He was not a sound
sleeper even at the end of his usual days, and tonight he felt his awareness
in every nerve and vein. Thus though his heart beat steadily and slowly he
could count the pulsation of his blood as it flowed through his body. His
hearing sharpened and magnified the cracks of beams above his head, the
scrape of a shutter loosened against the outside wall of the house, the slow
rise of the night wind. Margaret’s breathing, soft and not quite steady, dis-
turbed the rhythm of his own, and involuntarily he tried to keep in tune
with her. So for two hours he lay tortured by his wakefulness, troubled
by nothing clearly enough to absorb his mind, and yet all the minor trou-
bles of his days flitted darkly across his brain—Margaret’s injustice to his
dear little Mary, the young man in his printing shop, the labor union that
threatened the peace of his work, his father’s increasing weakness, his
own need for more money and the impossibility of speaking of it, Baynes
and the New York office, Baynes and Sandra, this fellow Harrow. He
doubted his own ability to handle Harrow. Suppose the fellow turned out to
be something stupendous, a really great writer, had he, Edward Haslatt,
the skill, the knowledge to shape the notable career of a genius?

Upon this he thought of the manuscript lying on his table and he rose
noiselessly and put on the woolen bathrobe and the slippers that were at
the foot of his bed. Margaret slept on, and still silent he stole across the
room and opened the door into his study.

When he had finished reading the manuscript the dawn was glimmering
in the sky. He was shivering cold and his eyelids burned and he felt sick

THE LONG LOVE

581

with' weariness. His hands as he turned the last page into its place were
trembling. It was more than fatigue. It was wonder and disgust and ad-
miration and terror. He had found at last a man who could write and was
'not afraid of God. or man.

' ^Tve got to be strong enough for him.”' So thinking, Edward crawled
into his cold bed and fell, asleep. '

, Six months later on an evening in late spring, he was still not sure that
he was strong enough. The whole town of Chedbury had gathered in the
courthouse to hear Lewis. Harrow talk. His fame had overwhelmed : them
irresistibly.' The swift and staggering success of his book had' astonished
and irritated them. The motive of his novel had been to make a vast joke
of wax. His hero was a young officer who early had seen the monstrosity of
urging his men to sacrifice life, their best and most essential possession,
for any cause whatever. In the end he had himself to choose between
sensible escape to save his own life, or death on the battlefield to maintain
Illusion for men dependent upon him, Chedbury would have forgiven Lewis
Harrow had his hero chosen death. Instead the heady young officer had
chosen to surrender to his own men, with apology, a swaggering smile,
court-martial and guns facing him as he stood back to a wail.

So unorthodox a bravery had confounded the sober people of Chedbury.
Harrow had brought them fame but its cause was questionable. Reluctantly,
after months of debate, they had decided to give him belated acknowl-
edgment by inviting him to speaL to them, and pride had struggled with
curiosity In coming to hear him.

Mrs. Seaton said what many others felt, ‘Tfs a pity that it had to be
only Mrs. Hinkle’s boy who got us famous.”

Old Thomas Seaton had opened his sleepy eyes after dinner when he
heard this. “Yes, why couldn’t it have been you, Tom? Or even Meg or
Sandra? Any child of your mother’s would have done better than Lew
Hinkle.” ' ■

Tom had grinned without speaking. He talked less and less and looked
brighter, smarter, and more sleek as he grew older. Still unmarried, he
lived at home, but since he did not now ask for money, his father let
sleeping dogs lie, though well aware that the cause for his son’s solitary
content, or resignation, lived in South Chedbury, in the form of a plump
and pretty Italian girl. The cause for Tom’s early drunkenness, Margaret
had confided to Edward, was that he had fallen in love with a fair-haired
English girl, whose father was an earl. The Seaton family, so notable in
Chedbury, was less considerable in Great Bairnbourne Castle. Mrs. Seaton
In wounded pride had demanded that Tom came back to Chedbury at once,
and Tom had obeyed, to forget rather easily, it seemed, his first love. He
had recalled it uneasily, however, upon reading Harrow’s book, when the
rebellious hero had loved just such a young English girl as he stili remem-
bered, when alone sometimes at night. The likeness had not escaped Mrs.

582

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Seaton’s sharpness, and between mother and son there had arisen an irrita-^
bflity- increased', by their determined silence upon the subject.. of , their ;
thoii^ts. '

; Even between, Edward and Margareh Harrow’s book had brought
a' small discord. Physical cowardice ' she" hated: and she smelled' something
foul in' the idea of a soldier,, an officer, choosing death at the hands of his
,,clan rather .than' his enemy,

: “Maybe they were his real enemies,” Edward had suggested.

She had given him a quick look. “Ifs not like you to be subtle, Ned.” .

“I don’t do it easily,” he’ conceded..,

“Explain yourself,” she demanded.

But he could never do ' .that and he ' had : tried , less and less 'as the years
passed. Words had been essential, to her in the early years of their marriage
and he had made earnest attempt to use them freely to her then. The
fluency that was natural to her made him sweat with, effort and he .gave
it up as unnatural to him.;,, ',

“I can’t explain myself,”' he now said. ',

“Try!” So she urged him. When he hesitated she said, biting her red
underlip, “How strange ' it "'.is that men don’t mind : stripping :, their' bodies
naked before women, but ask them to uncover their ' thoughts and they
grow as shy as virgins!”

She had settled herself on the- couch to read the evening this went on, ;
and half exasperated, half baffled, he had stopped on his way upstairs to tell
the children good night and had taken her head between his two hands,
had kissed her and gone on his way. He no longer quarreled with her for
any reason.

Meanwhile talk had continued in Chedbury. There had been a good deal
of discussion at a meeting two weeks before as to whether they would use
the church or the courthouse. The new minister had decided the matter by
rising to his feet, very tall and dry, “Tve read Harrow’s book,” he had said.
“I feel it would not be safe to allow him the use of the church. Profanity
seems natural to him. We’d better compromise on the courthouse.”

People had laughed. The salt of their minister’s tongue was their every-
day blessing. His sermons were plain and sometimes they made a man
angry, but at least one knew what they were about. Joseph Barclay had
been to sea in his youth and had been converted in Liverpool by an English
Methodist preacher making the rounds of the red-light district to rescue
the men from the ships. This preacher had rescued the young officer by
mighty words and a loud quarrel with the woman who had him in tow.
With his two hands he had laid hold on the boy and forced him out into
the rainy darkness of an En^ish night. He had taken him home and
lectured him and prayed with him and held him God’s prisoner until he
promised to repent.

So Joseph Barclay had repented and had one day returned to America
to keep his word with God. He was fifty years old now, and Chedbury

THE LONG LOVE

583

■had called him when Dr. Hart , had said they must At seventy Dr. Hart
had gone out and searched for the man who must take his place in Ched-
bury. He had found him' in a little church in the city of Lowell, a church
so blackened by factory smoke outside and the grimy hands of the con-
gregation inside that anyone else would have passed it, by. But : Francis
Hart had heard of the man who^ spoke so plainly that people, always knew
what he was saying,' and there he had found him. It had not been too easy
to persuade the plain-speaking man to come to Chedbiiry. belong, here
among the factory folk,” he had told old Dr. Hart ‘1 don’t like dressing
up. And when I preach I’m liable to take the skin off.”

‘‘Factory folk get their skin taken off in other ways,” Dr. Hart" had re-',
torted. “Nobody dares to skin my folk in Chedbury except me, and after
Fm dead they’ll grow soft”

He had lived to hear the new minister preach a couple of jBne searing
sermons and then he had died of pneumonia caught on a zero morning
when he insisted on shoveling the snow a blizzard had thrown on his front
walk. People did not always like Joseph Barclay but nobody dared rebel
because old Dr. Hart had brought him there. And the fellow told the truth
so consistently that no one wanted to be the first to speak against him.
There was, moreover, a certain excitement in going to church each Sunday.
Joseph Barclay never said the same thing twice. He lived alone in the
parsonage, was unmarried, and half the tune he cooked his own meals
because no woman in Chedbury would make fish chowder the way he
liked it

In the courthouse, then, the people of Chedbury sat on a late spring
evening, waiting to hear what the son of old Abe Hinkle had to say. The
older people could remember the family well, and when Abe died in his
final drunken fit, they had helped Mrs. Hinkle by giving her monumental
heaps of laundry. Many of the younger people could remember Lew
Hinkle, the spindle-shanked boy who went to school with them. They dis-
trusted the change of his name, though he made no pretense of concealing
either his father’s name or his reason for changing it. “No use keeping a
name that’s a commercial handicap,” Lewis Harrow had said publicly to
newspaper reporters, even in New York.

Tonight he stood, too much at ease, some thought, before his audience.
He was soberly dressed in a new gray suit, his rough black hair was smooth,
and the only exception that the reluctant people of Chedbury could take
as they gazed at him was the color of his tie which was red. Edward him-
self regretted the tie. He disliked bright hues especially when worn by men,
and Margaret had learned never to give him anything except a tie of a
solid blue or gray. He did possess one tie of wine red that he wore usually
on Christmas day with his good dark suit.

The courthouse was of an unusual and somewhat theatrical d^ign. A
hundred years ago an ambitious politican had conceived the idea of a
central platform where he could hold forth upon occasions. Around this

584

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

platform set against the north wall five tiers of seats: rose toward the door.
Sinee the courthome stood upon a hill, the effect was dramatic. It had
never been more so than tonight, when all of Chedbury had come out to
hear this humble and almost unknown son. The Seatons sat together at , the
left, and with them were Baynes and Sandra, come from New York today.
Edward had toyed with the notion of inviting them to the brief dinner
that he and Margaret had eaten with Lewis Harrow, and then had decided
against it. Sandra had a way of stimulating men to talk and he did not
want Harrow exhausted before his speech. There was no use in wasting on
Sandra witticisms that might amaze an audience. Sandra had put on a
brilliant green dress without sleeves, and she had combed her red hair
high, like the crest of a bird. Edward looked away from her impatiently.
New York was bringing out the worst in her. Old Tom Seaton was drows-
ing in his seat and Mrs. Seaton nudged him with her elbow. That was the
difference between them. Old Tom slept into his age and she grew more
wakeful as death drew near. Edward’s own parents sat side by side just
in front of himself and Margaret, and with them was Louise. So seldom
did he see his sister that he looked at her now with the detached, half-
critical mind of a stranger. She looked rather pretty in her quiet unadorned
fashion, hair parted and put back into some sort of knot at her neck and a
blue dress that made her skin pale and white. Her profile was better than
it had been when she was a girl. A certain thickness she had then was worn
away and she looked delicate.

He stopped looking at Louise after he perceived these general improve-
ments and settled himself to listen to Lewis Harrow, He had taken Harrow
down to the platform a few minutes before and had made a brief in-
troduction. He knew that he was a poor speaker, and being uneasy on his
feet, he said a few terse words in a dogged monotone, bare and without
congratulation, either to Harrow or to himself as the publisher of a
spectacularly successful first novel. But Chedbury was used to Edward
Haslatt and they did not judge him. To brisk short applause, he had walked
to his seat beside Margaret. She looked up at him softly, laughter hidden
in her eyes, and he felt her hand steal into his and cling.

He pondered for a moment the meaning of this inexplicable handclasp
as the people settled themselves to listen to Harrow, Nothing Margaret
did was without significance. She did not give him one idle caress. Why,
then, he asked silently, did she now press her soft palm into his, under
the careful cover of her fur cape? Distracted for a moment, he scarcely
heard what Harrow was saying.

Lewis Harrow spoke quickly, his deep voice penetrating into the farthest
reach of the great round hall. Edward had never seen him discomfited,
even when attacked by a galaxy of newspaper men, but tonight he per-
ceived a slight belligerence in Harrow’s manner, as though he felt himself
on trial before the people of Chedbury. They were haunted perhaps by
the memory of a hundred years of other trials in this very place, judg-

THE LONG LOVE

585

mcBts BpoE'men who had stolen what was not theirs, who' had, taken lives-
of other ' men, women who had - wept, clutching the hands of bewildered
children. The . courthouse was a haunted place,

■Lewis Harrow seemed to feel it He lifted ,his head and, stared about
him at them all. The hard, central light poured down light and heat upon
him and he saw the faces of the people gleaming at hlin out of the sur-
rounding shadows. Then his difddence left him and clasping his hands be-
hind him he began to speak with sudden ease.

'*What I have done proves nothing, to you or to myself. You have done
me an honor in coming to hear me tonight, but I shall not have deserved
that honor until I write my second book, and my third. After the third then
you may judge me and I will accept your judgment. I can write about
war— yes, I grant you that I made you feel something of what men suffer
in a war. But anybody can write about such melodrama. The story is
ready made. The stage of war is small, the pattern set. The common words
are ready— patriotism, bravery, death.

“But can I write about life? That you must decide for me, ten years
from now. Take our town! If I were to write a novel about Chedbury
where would I begin? Where would you begin, if you were I? I grew up
here, among you. You knew my parents. With my mother I came in and
out of your houses. Our door was the back door, but for my purposes
that was the best one. I saw your kitchens. I heard the underside of your
lives. Destined to be what I am, I had even then the mind of a writer.
That is, I never forgot anything I saw or heard, I still do not More than
that, I understand far more than a word, I hear infinitely beyond a whisper.

“Where shall I begin my next book? Shall I begin with young Dr.
Walters? You remember Bertram Walters, how brilliant he was, how hand-
some. Why he left Boston and came to settle in our little town we never
knew. It took me a long time to find out. Until I knew I could not under-
stand any more than you did, why, at the height of his youth and strength,
he should kill himself one hot July day. I can remember the day and the
hour. I had been swimming with some of you down at the old hole in the
river. You left me at Bolster’s Alley where I lived. We in Bolster’s Alley
heard things before you did, and we already knew that he had shot himself
in exactly the correct spot in his heart. He was a perfectionist, you’ll re-
member. I loped up to the Walters’ house and saw him dead— just for a
minute before they put me out. Something in his face made me hang aronnd
the undertaker’s place the next day. Jake Bentley and I were friends in a
queer sort of way and he let me come in sometimes and look at the dead
people. I looked a long time at Dr. Waiters. Jake and I talked and won-
dered why he did it. Something Jake said helped me to find out, later— half
accidentally. It would be telling my story too soon if I told you now.

“Or should I begin with Bolster’s Alley itself? There was an alley! You
have cleaned it up since I lived there. Our town officers are more efficient
than they used to be. Maybe it’s just that we have more conscience than

586

■AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

we Bsed.to Mve. The old Hinkle -shack is gone, men I lived there with m
mother, you’d be surprised -at the good citizens I used to see; sometimes,
on a dark night, walking along the Alley. My mother was a good woman,
too old and fat, maybe, for sin, but there were some beautiful women in
the Alley*

‘^Maybe I ought to begin my story with Henry Croft, that matchless
teacher, -who beat me half to death when I was- a rebellious schoolboy.
That was only a decade and a half ago— seems strange - that things have
changed so much that if anybody beat a child now in the public school of
Chedbury, he’d be arrested. But there was war then between Henry Croft
and me and he always won. He won, too, in another way. Fm no fool and I
began to see that the reason he couldn’t keep from beating me was that
he knew I had something in me and he was furious because I didn’t see it
for myself. I guessed it one day, when I was around thirteen. He grew
angry with me because I hadn’t written a composition. He said to me,
‘Down with your bags,’ and I got ready. He stared at me and began to
cry. The whip dropped from his hand to the floor. For the first time in my
life I was scared of him. Then he began to shout at me through his tears.
‘Aren’t you going to make something of yourself?’ That was what he bel-
lowed at me. I pulled up my pants, and I knew he would never beat me
again. Then I could talk to him. Then he could talk to me. In the next
four years he was the most wonderful teacher a boy ever had. He set my
feet upon the path.”

Margaret had drawn her hand away and now she sat leaning forward
on her elbows. The tears were running down her cheeks, Edward had
forgotten her, but he turned and saw the glistening of her eyes. The people
of Chedbury were motionless in silence. Mrs. Croft sat in her widow’s
weeds, tall and gaunt, her face like staring stone. Little old Mrs. Walters
bent her head. Thomas Seaton was wide awake and Mrs, Seaton was
waving her small sandalwood fan swiftly to and fro.

Edward leaned toward Margaret “Can we let this go on?”

She shook her head without reply, her eyes fixed on Harrow.

“Where shall I begin my book of life?” he was asking. “Shall I begin
it in one of our big houses? It is a house full of life, as you well know.
Long ago a strong man married a beautiful woman and they produced
beautiful children. What becomes of beautiful children? They begin so Ml
of promise. What happens to them? Shall I tell that story?

“I might choose another house and a plain honest sort of family, the
family that lives in every other house in Chedbury. They don’t struggle
with poverty but they struggle with life. The man started out with modest
dreams of himself, of love. The woman had a little dream, too, nothing
very big, of course. We are cautious folk here. No use dreaming about
what we can’t have! But the dreams of this man and this woman were all
cautious, possible ones. They could be more than dreams. But they weren’t.
Why? The man and woman were faithful to each other, of course. We

THE LONG LOVB

587

never saw him in the Alley. He always went to church oB' Sunday , with Ms
wife and Ms children, and he wasn’t afraid of anything-except life' itself.
Ask him if he wanted something, from a helping of chicken pot pie at a
church supper to a million dollars and he would have said the same thing,
‘I don’t care if I do.’ The phrase .expresses hkn. Perhaps it expresses Ghed-
bury. And yet, in spite of his dreams, which never came true because he
never dared to make them big enough, or bold enough, he’s had a life.
In a way, he’s even had a love, and so has the woman. Yes, perhaps theirs
is the true story of Chedbury.”

Against his own will, Edward glanced at his father and mother but he
could not see their faces. Dangerous, indeed, this fellow Harrow! He had
taken Ghedbury into the hollow of Ms hand, and he was looking at them
all, like a great Gulliver. They’d be angry tomorrow, and he’d hear from
it. Then suddenly he had a grim sort of pleasure in it. Whatever happened,
he had Ms big man, Harrow would make Haslatt and Sons known every-
where in the world. But first it was Ms Job to make Harrow known every-
where in the world, a job he’d dreamed of doing somehow, if he could find
the man. He could feel in his hands already the big new book. Whfie
Harrow talked, Edward, in Ms mind, turned fine paper, studied the per-
fect type, considered the width of margins and the design of a jacket. Miat
color for the binding? Wme red, perhaps, and gold stamping? Tomorrow
he’d finger his way through Ms typebook. He was in the grip of Ms own
private frenzy of creation.

He did not notice that night, when they went home and to bed, that
Margaret was silent and thoughtful. She went about the house in her usual
way, pouring a last saucer of milk for Mary’s kitten, peeling an orange
and eating it by the dying coals of the living-room fire, and watching him,
her blue eyes thoughtful, as he tested doors, pulled down shades and wound
the clock in the hail. He went upstairs before her, because it was he, rather
than she, who looked at the two older cMldren. They had been moved
out of the nursery into rooms of their own when each was seven, and he
tiptoed to one bedside and then the other. Tom he always visited first,
because he liked to linger by Mary. The boy was lying outstretched and
strong, one leg outside the covers. The windows were wide open and a
cool breeze, smelling of the not too distant sea, filled the room. He covered
Tom and remembered that his son had lost a tooth that day. He took a
nickel from his pocket, and feeling under the pillow he found the tooth
and left the nickel. Then he went into the hall and opened the next door.

The night wind was cool here, too, but Mary was curled under a thin
silk quilt and when he touched her forehead he found it damp with heat.
This child had always the impulse to Mde herself, to burrow deep into
shelter. He rolled back the quilt cautiously from her neck and she woke
at once and stared at him with strange eyes. He saw that she did not
recognize him.

‘Tt’s me, dearie,” he whispered, bendmg over her.

588

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

me,”'"";'

‘‘You miistn’t get scared so easily.”

‘‘Because I thought it was somebody else!”

“Ifs always I who come here at night to see if you’re all right,”

“It mightn’t always be you.”

Some far truth in this confounded him. He kissed her and drew her
arms gently from his neck. “Go to sleep, Mary.”

She curled down again and he tiptoed out of the room and met Margaret
coming from the nursery,

“Sandy all right?” he inquired.

“Robust and lovely,” Margaret said.

The phrase fitted their third child. Sandy, not beautiful except as pink
cheeks, blond hair, and innocent blue eyes always carry the implication of
beauty, was rich in health and simple charm. She was a child upon whom
Edward did not waste an instant’s worry.

Later, before he got into his bed, he lingered by Margaret’s bed, and
remembering the clasp of her hand he stooped and gave her a tentative
kiss. She received it without enthusiasm, though kindly, and mindful of the
lesson that the years had taught him, he smoothed her hair for a moment
and then left her. The exhilaration of his spirit prevented him from per-
ceiving her imusual silence and he slept.

“A nice nest of hornets,” Mr, Haslatt said the next morning. He was
waiting at the door of the elevator when his son stepped out of it rather
more briskly than usual.

A collected stubbornness had gathered in Edward as he proceeded on
his usual way to the office. The greetings that he received from meetings
in the morning on the trolley were always curt. Chedbury was not at its
best before noon. But this morning mumbled words were only nods and
men read their morning papers without raising their heads as he passed.

All this was introduction to his father’s gritty remark, and Edward, in-
wardly disturbed, refused to acknowledge it.

“What’s the matter?” he asked with involuntary deceit.

“Looks like you’ll have to take a choice between that fellow and the
rest of the town,” his father said.

Edward did not reply. He passed between the desks in the main office
without speaking and certainly without allowing himself to notice the sup-
pressed and curious looks that the girls sent him. He went into his office
and shut the door after his father.

“Sit down,” he said.

He sat down himself behind the square old desk that had once belonged
to Mr. Mather and his father took the chair opposite. He was never com-
fortable thus facing his father, but today he did not allow his feelings to

THE LONG .LOVE

589

move him. If It were to be necessary to fight all Chedbury for Lewis
Harrow, let it begin here. He waited for his father. .

“I don’t see as Lew Hinkle had any reason to talk the way he did last
night,’’. Mr. Haslatt said. He wore an old .pepper-and-salt suit upon which
the thread had worn down to gray, which made' more dun the grayness of
his skin and hair. He had grown thin with age and his long nose was pink'
at the tip. In cold or excitement a drop quivered at his nostril and Edward
repressed his old youthful impulse to mention it. If he had to contend with
his father on the large matter of Lewis Harrow, he would not Indulge
himself in small personal repulsions. He looked toward the window. Ched-
buiy was most beautiful now, but man could be as vile here as anywhere.

*^You have to let a writer talk anyway he wants,” he said. Then without
giving his father opportunity to answer he went on. “Baynes will be in
soon, I suppose,”

“Fve lived my life in this town,” Ms father replied.

“I intend to live mine here, too,” Edward said doggedly.

“Your mother says Mrs. Walters is terribly upset”

Edward wheeled in Ms chair. “The real question is whether we are
going to go to the top with Harrow or whether we’re going to stay right
here in Chedbury along with Mrs. Walters and her kind.”

“You can’t please God and Mammon,” Mr. Haslatt said solemnly.

“Mrs. Walters isn’t either of them,” Edward retorted.

Upon tMs foolish conversation Baynes burst into the office like a soaring
rocket, scattering good humor and optimism. He had on a new suit, a
striped thing, and the shoulders had a silly sloped effect.

“Thought I’d find you two here! Wasn’t that a swell performance last
night? Skinned half the town, didn’t he? All as neat as you please! Took
’em out of cold storage. We’ve been fighting at the Seatons or I’d have
been here sooner.”

“Mr. Seaton sore?” Mr. Haslatt inquired.

“You can’t make that tough old Mde sore,” Baynes said. “Mrs. Seaton
is all upset over bad taste, of course. Curious, young Tom is on her side.
Nobody is going to have any peace in the town if Harrow really writes
that book. If it’s half the book he says it’s going to be, we’re all set for a
fortune.” , ^

“That how Sandra looks at it?” Edward asked.

“Sandra’s out helping him to pick the site for his house.” Baynes sat
on the window sill and swung Ms leg.

“He ain’t going to live here!” Mr. Haslatt exclaimed.

“He is,” Baynes replied. “He doesn’t want to live in any of the old
houses he could buy. That’s Chedbury for you. Yelling about him and
still they’d sell him the house from under their feet if he paid enough.
He’s going to build Ms house-wants to make his own ghosts, he says,”

Edward considered this with the silence usual to him. Certainly it would
have been easier if Lewis Harrow had chosen to live at the safe distance

590

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

of New York, where Chedbury thought writers belonged. But lie would
do nothing to Jeopardize his precious possession. Once in aiifetime a really
great writer fell into a publisher’s lap. He saw other publishers, big-city
fellows, swarming like sharks about the frail bark of Haslatt and Sons. He
would indulge Harrow to the- last .degree, mindful of the - genius that the
man contained— a gem in a casket of clay,

“He wants to live where he can look down on Chedbury,” Baynes was
saying. “Sandra’s taking him to the top of Granite.”

“Who’s goin’ to build the road up there?” Mr. Haslatt demanded.

“He will,” Baynes said joyously, “out of the money he makes from us.”

Mr. Haslatt’s eyes grew glassy. “We’re gettin’ in too deep.”

Edward turned to his desk. “We’ll swim.”

At the brusqueness in his voice, Mr. Haslatt rose. “I’d better get to work
and leave you two to do the same,” he declared, and closed the door
sharply behind him.

Edward looked at his younger brother. Baynes was taking on a curious
half -dissipated air. He had grown a strong dark mustache which he
trimmed to show Ms still youthful mouth, and as he stared out of the
window he twisted one end of the mustache thoughtfully. His dark eyes
narrowed. “We ought to get Harrow nicely married to some high-bom
Chedbury female. Then he could rip us all up without damage. I don’t
know the girls any more, though, and you never did. Pity I got Sandra—
that would have been so beautiful. A Seaton wed to the washerwoman’s
son!” Baynes laughed silently.

Edward was repelled by both words and laughter, Baynes had grown
coarse from living in New York. Maybe it was only because of Sandra.
She was coarse, he had always imagined secretly. There was none of
Margaret’s delicacy in her, and New York had polished away any sem-
blance of youthful reserve. Sandra, neither young nor old, had taken on all
the gloss of a silver statue.

“I’m surprised you talk of your own wife in that way,” Edward said.
“I hope you two aren’t growing apart.” He was aware of something stijff
and old-fashioned in what he sai<i but he did not know how to put the
words differently.

Baynes was blithe. He swung his leg from the desk and sat down in the
chair which his father had left. “Sandra’s ail right— has to have her head,
of course. All women do since the war. Notice how different females are
since we came marching home?”

“Since I didn’t march, I don’t notice it,” Edward said dryly. He was
sorting his morning’s mail carefully into piles, ready for dictation, and he
observed with pleasure a statement from a paper mill that the cost of
paper had gone down again. It had been ruinously high during the war be-
cause the government had used so much to print stuff nobody read, anyhow.

“You and Meg are growing old graciously.”

The voice of his younger brother, teasing and impudent, roused Edward.

THE LONG LOVE

591

He folded the morning newspaper and leaning over Ms desk in a gesture
' unwontedly youthful he clapped Baynes on. the head.

Baynes pretended alarm. ‘'Hey-there’s life in' the old dog yet.”

Upon this playfulness Jane, the secretary, opened the door. She stared
at the two brothers with gravity, decided to ignore what she had seen and
came forward.

“About that new type,” she began.

Edward sat back, and determined against shame before this elderly
creature whom he had inherited from Haslatt and Mather, he answered
mildly, “Come in, Jane. I’ve decided on the Oxford. This new book is going
to , be twice as long, I can see,”

Baynes interrupted, “Want me to wait?”

“Yes. I want to hear every damn city trick we can turn.”

So seldom did he swear that Baynes looked surprised and Jane turned
a muddy red. Both yielded at once to Edward the place of master of the
irm. Jane, respectful for the moment, murmured assent and withdrew, and
Baynes settled down to business.

For two hours the brothers sat in close conference, more deeply akin
in their common reverence for the good fortune that had fallen into their
hands than even they were in blood. Baynes talked in his new impetuous
fasMon, his sentences city clipped, and Edward listened, weighing, assess-
ing, deciding. They laid plans for advance advertising, for a New York
dinner, for some of the new cocktail parties that were becoming the fashion.
With growing generosity Edward acknowledged that Baynes and Sandra
were becoming essential to Haslatt and Sons. He himself could never have
planned so dashing a program, and he would not have allowed Margaret
to participate in something that in his heart he considered undignified. But
the war, he conceded, had changed everything except Chedbury.

On Granite Mountain Lewis Harrow was roaming. He had mounted
one hillock after another upon that massive bosom, looking down at Ched-
bury with critical eyes. Now as the circle of choice narrowed he climbed
a broad smooth height for the fourth time. “This is still the best one,” he
announced to Sandra.

She, looking a little paler even than usual, was trying not to pant. She
sank to a gray rock. “Thank God.”

He looked down on her with familiar and cynical eyes. She was the new
modern woman whom he had seen iu the capitals of Europe and in New
York. With ail her efforts she did not compare to her older sister. Mrs.
Haslatt was a beauty, the sort one saw in the paintings in the Louvre.
Queer how he had so loved the monstrosity of a museum that he spent
all Ms leaves in it! There wasn’t a girl on the streets of Paris to compare
to the lovely women he saw in the Louvre— those women whom he could
never conquer.

“You’re not as tough as you look,” he told Sandra with intentional

592

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

rudeness. He always wanted to be rude to women like her. . He longed to
hurt them.

^*But the way you’ve climbed,” Sandra complained.

"You didn’t have to come.”

"Indeed I did. It’s all business.”

; ■ ' "What-this?”

"Certainly, you’re our Great Author-didn’t you know?”

“Hell, I know well enough.”

"Ask and you shall have anything!” She rose dramatically, holding out
her hands.

He turned away from her. "Thanks—I want very little. A house on top
of this hill-a low house made of granite, with big windows.”

"Where you’ll live alone?”

"I’ve always lived alone.”

"Need you?” The red head under a little green hat was gracefully
inclined.

"No, I don’t need to—I want to.”

He began walking down the mountain at great speed, the loose stones
rushing under his feet, and she followed.

"With such a temper,” she said sweetly, "how wise to live alone!”

He did not answer this, and seeing the broadness of his back she called,
"Chalk that off— I didn’t say it.”

He laughed then and turning he put his arm through hers and they ran
down the mountain at dangerous speed. She liked it. Glancing at her rather
bold profile he saw that the danger had lit her green eyes and reddened
her cheeks. It was a familiar sight. He was quite aware of his power over
women and he had used it so often that now he knew he was ready for
someone quite different— someone wholly different from this starved slen-
derness, this sharply pallid face, these chilly thin hands. Plenty of catlike
female passion here, of course, but that was all. And passion was cheap—
the price was low in any market. It had ceased to be fun. He wanted it with
decorations— or perhaps foundations. He wanted something to worship.

They got into his little roadster at the bottom of the hill and wound their
way down into Chedbury. At the Seaton house he stopped and she, laying *
her hand upon his coat, persuaded him. "Come in for a little while.”

"You dare me to?”

"Why?”

"I saw your mother looking at me last night through a lorgnette.”

"Maybe she’d like you better close.”

"All right. If the fur flies it won’t be mine.”

He climbed out and followed her with stolid footsteps into the great
front door. "Handsome house,” he murmured, "the wings are wonderful.
It took genius to dare to put those balustrades around all the roofs.”

"My father did that.”

He braced his shoulders and prepared for a handsome old lady with

THE LONG, LOVE

593

lorgnette and . a ' somnolent old' man in a shapeless tweed suit Old Tom
Seaton was not in the 'big living room but he did not notice it. For .Margaret
was there-Mrs. Haslatt, he corrected himself. .He had kept thinking about
her through half the night as she had looked in her own house, as she
moved about, so content that it made him angry. Out of this anger he
had conceived the things he had later said to Chedbury. She was a queen,
possessing a realm and yet, somehow, seeming careless of it. Did she love
that dul fellow Haslatt? How could she? Yet she looked impregnable—
passionately pure, perhaps. He postponed the thought of passion. He
wanted to respect her— perhaps worship her a bit Life was really fearfully
empty.

He went forward gladly, seeing in the light of day that beautiful warm
woman whom he had seen last night at her own dinner table. “Mrs. Has-
latt!’* he exclaimed. “How lucky! Indeed, I didn’t expect to see you so soon
again.”

He clasped her hand in both his own and old Mrs. Seaton sitting by
the window observed him with lifted eyebrows. She had withered without
growing more gentle, and now her cool gray eyes observed this coarse
young man who was holding Margaret’s hand. A genius, Margaret had
called him. She was too worldly wise not to distrust genius while she valued
it There was nothing more dangerous. And Edward, poor fellow, had
none of it. Margaret had married a good man, an excellent man, who
was even making her comfortably and quietly rich, but he had no genius.
Fortunately this fellow came from impossibly low antecedents. The Has-
latts were not aristocrats, but it was a respectable New England family-
net quite local gentry, perhaps, but not merchants.

“How do you do, Mr. Harrow,” she said, lisping frostily.

“How do you do, Madame Seaton,” he replied grandly. He bowed over
the narrow old hand she extended.

Only a lowborn person could be so exaggerated, she felt. She was shaken,
nevertheless, by the tigerlike eyes so near her own. They were not dark, as
she had supposed. They were greenish yellow— an unpleasant color. She
withdrew her hand.

Sandra had flung herself into a chair. “He’s going to build on the Spur,”
she announced. She pulled ofl her hat and shook out her short hair.

“First I must find out who owns it,” Harrow said. He sat down by
Margaret upon the couch with such assurance that she moved away from
him involuntarily. He exuded some sort of faint animal odor, not un-
pleasant and yet which she disliked.

“I imagine anybody would be glad to sell a piece of Granite,” she said.

“I will tempt and beguile and bewitch anybody into doing it,” he said
turning his tiger-colored eyes upon her. “I will make it impossible for
anybody to refuse me.”

Mrs. Seaton was suddenly overcome with total dislike for this presence.
After all, she had never sat in the same room with the son of a laundress.

594

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Sbie rose and walked slowly to the open French window. “Your father haS'
been asleep quite long enough,” she observed to her danghters. “I can see
him lying out there under the elm tree with his handkerchief over his face.
I shall wake him and tell him he must amuse me.”

‘'Wonderful that he can still amuse,” Lewis declared. “What a marriage,
madame!” /

She inclined her head without answering this ribaldry, and they watched
her trailing gray skirts move slowly down the steps.

Now the animal presence became very strong indeed, and the summer
air was suddenly stifling. Seated close to Lewis Harrow, it was too near,
and Margaret rose. “I must be going home— the children will be waiting
for luncheon.”

“Invite me,” Harrow said shamelessly. “I want to see that beautiful
child, Mary. Somewhere she will be entwined in the pages of my book, a
little delicate vine, green and tender.”

“We have only the lightest of noon meals.”

Margaret’s unwilling voice protested and he refused to accept it. “It is
Mary I want to see.”

He followed her from the room with strong footsteps and Sandra, peer-
ing out of the window, saw with some astonishment her eider sister seated
in the roadster and whirled away. Tom lounged into the room at this mo-
ment. He was beginning to grow gray early, and this gave him a look of
false distinction.

“Damn quiet house,” he remarked. “Where’s everybody?”

“Gone,” Sandra said, and continued to stare out of the window in a
peculiar fashion.

When Edward let himself into his home that night there was nothing
to intimate that there had been an animal presence there in his absence.
The wide hall was calm and since he was late, he knew that Margaret was
upstairs putting their youngest child to bed, and that Mary and Tommy
were in the process of cleaning and changing upon which Margaret in-
sisted before dinner. The second maid, Nora, whom he had engaged some
weeks before because he thought Margaret looked tired, now stole out of
the back-hall door and took his hat and stick.

“Put a little sherry in the Hving room,” he ordered and then slowly
he mounted the stairs.

It had been an exhausting, exciting, dangerous sort of day. He had
plunged deeply into something new and he was at once frightened and
exhilarated. If Hanow’s next book failed Haslatt and Sons would fail with
it, for he had mortgaged aH his profits from the war book. It would be
close sailing until he had the finished manuscript in his bands and could
decide for himself whether Harrow had more than one book in him. That
was the test, true always, of a writer. One book did not prove anyone.
What Haslatt and Sons wanted— that is, what Edward himself wanted—

THE EONG EOVE

595 .

Wias 3. inaii: who was a fountain of books, throwing thcni off with cvciy
new facet and stage in his development

At the top of the stairs the half-opened door revealed to him Margaret
with Sandy in her arms beside the crib. She wore the long blue peignoir
which he especially diked and his , heart throbbed once' or ' twice at the
sight of her beauty. Marriage had become her, he flattered himself. She
had bloomed gently, like a rose in mild sunshine. , He, being a fancier of
roses in a small way, liked in his secret musings to liken his wife, to a rose.
Such was Ms inner shyness that he had only once or twice been able to
tell her of this likeness. Why he had not been able to keep open the doorS'
of communication between himself and Margaret he did not know and he
often pondered. Perhaps he loved her too well, and his old defensive pride
rose against complete self '•revelation. So large was her nature, so com-
prehensive her understanding, her ancestry so superior to his, he sometimes
feared, that all his old sensitivity remained alert in him, the more wary
because he could not tell her that it was there. He was ashamed of tMs
and yet helpless to change it. He wanted her to believe that he was no
ordinary man and yet there were times when he knew he was only that
The uncertainty of his inner atmosphere was the result of his own inability
to judge himself. Whether he was better than other men he did not know.
He suspected that his inordinate pride was a sort of vanity. He believed
that he was better than the average but he was not sure. Had he been
sure, he was coming to think, he could have spoken freely to his wife at any
moment.

As it was, though his heart quickened, though he went into the nursery
and took her in his arms, child and all, he could only murmur, ‘T ought
not to touch you— I haven’t washed.” These words his lips said while his
silent heart adored.

He imagined, all his sharp senses aware, that there was something
reserved in the kiss she gave him. This possibility rendered him completely
dumb. With alarm fluttering in his breast he kissed his daughter and leaned
on the side of the crib while Margaret covered the child for sleep.

They left the room hand in hand and again he imagined or perceived
the less than usual warmth in her hand, although it clasped his with resolu-
tion. But there was a difference between clinging and determination.

‘‘Everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered promptly. “Except— I don’t like your Lewis
Harrow.”

“My Lewis Harrow?” he repeated, smiling slightly.

“Yes, yours,” she said, “you’ve captured him, haven’t you?”

“I hope so— for the sake of business.”

“There it is,” she exclaimed. “I don’t like to think he’s paying for our
bread and butter—”

“And his own cake,” Edward put in.

She threw Mm a strange look, which he could not comprehend. “Do

596

AMEMCAK TRIPTYCH

you know why I don’t like him? Because be invited : himself to luncheon
today alone with the children and mel”

‘"Why didn’t you telephone me?’^

She looked at him in astonishment. “Honestly, Ned, I didn’t think of it.”
Her amazement at herself was so real that he smiled again.

“You must always think of me, you know,” he said mildly. “Was he nice
to the children?”

“He didn’t notice Tommy or Sandy, but he was foolish to Mary. If she
were anything but a child I’d say he— made love to her.”

“That’s impossible, Margaret”

“Ned, it was disgusting, reallyl”

He saw that her cheeks were flaming and in the same instant, her eyes
were so brightly blue, her hair so black and flying, that he felt her beauty
burned into the very flesh of his heart. Had she thus appeared to Harrow?
Feeling with dismay the rush of old jealousy he had thought long since
disciplined from him, he went into the next room, which was his own, that
she might not discern his pitiable condition and grow angry. She had not
for years been greatly angry with him, for he had not for those same
years allowed his young green jealousy to show itself in words or pique.
Now he knew it was there in him still, and must at all costs be hidden
from her for the sake of his own self-respect in her eyes.

He felt suddenly very tired and he sank into his old leather chair and
covered his eyes with his hands. Why should Harrow shower his attentions
upon the child Mary? Why Mary and not Tommy or Sandy? Why except
that with his cursed novelist’s perception and imagination he had already
understood that Margaret did not love her eldest child too well? And with
this he had forged a cunning cruel weapon to draw Margaret’s eyes to
himself. Not for one moment did Edward believe that Lewis Harrow cared
for any child.

The monstrosity of this behavior in a man, that he used a child for
such a purpose, mingled in Edward’s thoughts with jealousy lest that Mar-
garet had indeed noticed Harrow because of this wile and with anger
that his favorite child should have been made a tool. He sat motionless in
the chair, longing furiously to find Harrow and tell him to get out of his
sight and forever. This fury he dealt with in continued silence and by means
of reason. Harrow was less than a man. He was a thing of emotions and
imaginations, fluid with creation, irresponsible, untrustworthy, a creature to
be watched and controlled— yes, and used. It was folly to be jealous of
him— as well be jealous of a drunkard or a fool. The man had no being
except in imagination. Whatever he had done was no more real than the
drama in a play-the fellow was probably acting out a scene in the novel
he was about to write. It would be giving him undue importance to think
of it as something a real man had done. Genius was as valuable and as
unpredictable, perhaps as ungovernable, as the waves of the sea.

Upon this slow rationalizing he heard his door open softly and his daugh-

THE . LONG ' LOVE

597

ter Mary come stealmg in. It troubled him sometimes that she moved; so-
stilly, as though her vitality were not enough for the speed and noise of
childhood. Yet she looked healthy enough as she stood there in the door'
in her little white muslin frock. She, was smiling and he saw the, dimples
in her cheeks,' the gift her' mother had given her. Margaret’s dimples,, born
again!,

,^‘Shall I come in, Papa?” ■

*®Please do, darling— though I haven’t washed yet”
won’t stay.”

She walked softly across the jfloor, almost tiptoe, and leaned against
him. When he put his arm around her she rested her head upon his shoulder
and he smelled the clean freshness of her dark hair.

**Had a good day, dear?”

Yes— almost”

“Why only almost?”

“Papa, do you like Mr. Harrow?”

He evaded this. “Mamma says he was here to lunch.”

“Yes. He likes me very much.”

“Did he say so?”

“Yes.”

He was furious again with Lewis Harrow. This daughter of his! He held
her close. “We all like you— love you, you know.”

“I know.” She sighed and he forbore to ask the cause for it It was so
much easier not to ask. He felt her lips at his ear. “Papa.”

“Yes?”

“But he likes me better than he does anybody else.”

“Did he say that?”

“Yes.”,

“Then he told a lie!” These words escaped him forcibly.

She actually drooped. “Did he, Papa?”

“Yes! And it was very wrong for him to talk like that to you, Mary.
Mamma didn’t like it. She told me about it. And you must forget what he
said. Little girls get all the love they need from their parents. You must
think about school now, you know, and your friends— Millicent Bascom
and Josephine Hill. They’re very nice girls. And in two years or so you
may have dancing lessons and then you will have other friends, too— boys
of your own age.”

He was taking it far too seriously, he told himself. He was making every-
thing worse, deepening the very impressions which he hoped to erase. He
rose. “Now run along, Mary. I must get ready for dinner.”

She went out of the room then, her step lingering, and he went into the
bathroom and scrubbed his hands with unnecessary vigor.

That, he might have thought, was the end of it. The dinner passed as
usual. He could always be sure of a good meal at night, a dish or two
that Margaret had planned and to which she had given some touch of her

598

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

own. Toniglit it was .veal, baked in French fashion, with^ wine and herbs,'
and for dessert a blneberry pie. He was growing to be something of E'
connoisseur in food, for his appetite was variable and he ate better if he
considered ■ flavor and texture. Tonight his awareness of everything was
sharp. He saw himself at the head of his own table and unconsciously he
straightened his spare tall frame as he looked at Margaret. She had put on
a gown of some thin silver-gray stuff, so old he had almost forgotten— or
else it was new.

“Is that a new dress?” he asked.

“You should be ashamed, Ned,” she replied. “It was part of my trous-
seau. I wore it in New Orleans, don’t you remember? Years ago!”

“I remember only a glorious haze,” he said smiling.

“I tried it on for fun-just to see if I could wear it. I believe Fm actually
a little thinner than I was then.”

He kept looking at her after that, knowing that the girl Margaret had no
beauty to compare to this, his wife’s.

And from them had come these children. They sat one on either side
of the table, quiet at the end of the day. Even Tommy ate in phlegmatic
silence. He was a hearty eater, and some day he would be a big ungainly
man like old Thomas. But Mary was delicate, and in spite of her prettiness
there was something about her which reminded him of his sister.

“Seen Louise lately?” he asked Margaret.

Mary lifted her head. “She was cross with me today, Papa— a little—
because I was late in the afternoon for school.”

“Did you tell her why?” he asked.

“Yes, I said Mr. Harrow was here with us for lunch and then she got
cross— only a little. She said it was no excuse.”

“It wasn’t, I suppose.”

“He kept talking,” Margaret said vaguely.

“We ought to have Louise over,” he said. “Maybe we could have her
sometime with Harrow. It would give her something special. We never
do anything for Louise.”

Margaret replied, “Of course. Let’s remember. Only why must we have
him again?”

She made her query with raised and quivering eyebrows, as though
laughter waited, and he gave her a steady look. “Think of it as business.”

Tommy shifted his attention from a second piece of pie. “I don’t like
Mr. Harrow,” he said in his large deep voice. “When he grabs me he holds
too hard. It hurts.”

“Hit him in the snoot,” Edward said suddenly.

His children looked at him in amazement and then broke into joyful
laughter. So seldom was their father funny! Their laughter restored whole-
someness to the evening and Edward in the secrecy of his inner being
ridiculed his jealousy.

THE LONG LOVE

599

The' small house of Haslatt and Sons was shaken 'to its roots. A tornado
had seized it, bringing life, giving growth, forcing heat and light and a
spasm of ' wind. Again and again Edward Haslatt wished that he had never
met' Lewis Harrow, ^ that the fellow had stayed in France after the war,
that he had been lost in New York, almost that he had strayed into' the
portals'' of some other publishing house rather than have come to the -quiet '
town of Chedbury to lay hold upon his own -budding business. The swelling
advance sales of' Harrow’s new book marched across the country Ike a
.triumphant beast. A vanguard of rumor preceded the three young saiesmen
whom Edward hired and put into the charge of Baynes with every caution
: against extravagance. Caution was forgotten. The eagerness of booksellers
infected Baynes and spread to the salesmen and they ran hither and thither,,
praising a book none of them had yet read, that no one had seen except
Harrow, and he carelessly writing against time declared that it might or
might not be finished by late winter.

‘Tt must be finished,’’ Edward said sternly. ‘Tve gambled everything
I have on that book, Lewis,” and knew as he spoke that there was no
promise to be had out of him.

Harrow had been engrossed in the building of a squat stormproof house
on Granite. The walls stood under a wide overhanging roof, and from a
distance looked like a bird that had paused to brood upon the mountain.
Harrow was amused by the likeness and enhanced it by adding feathery
trellises to the wings and a thick short tower to the gate. He called his
house The Eagle and on Sundays young people from Chedbury climbed
up to see it. He had begun to live in it long before it was finished, and it
pleased him to look from the windows and see persons approaching. He
rushed out and brought them in, showed them through the low rooms,
few in number but huge in size, the windows enormous and set so that he
could see for miles when he chose to look out of them. The house stood
soldiy clawing the ground with its deep foundations, and though the winds
roared, it was impervious. Harrow had insisted on walls eighteen inches
thick, as he had seen them in the fortresses of Europe. There was neither
cellar nor second floor and one room led into another in a semicircle
curving toward the mountain.

To Edward the house was astonishing and hideous and he told Margaret
what he thought,

*‘Certainiy it is not the house for a family,” she replied, ‘‘but then I
don’t think Lewis wants a family. Fm not sure he even wants a wife.”

By now Harrow was so much his property that Edward did not inquire
how it was that she knew this about him. Women had instinct, of course,
and of instinct Margaret had her full share. His jealousy of the spring had
passed or perhaps had only been submerged in the rush of increasing busi-
ness. The revenge that he had feared from Chedbury after the evening
in the courthouse had never been taken. Chedbury had bristled, there had
been some quiet weeping by Mrs. Walters, and Mrs. Croft was perma-

600

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

nently angry. Henry, Croft had died tea years ago, and she had been happier
without Mm, as everybody knew, and yet she had not been able to keep
from thinking of him for weeks after Lewis Harrow' had brought him to life
again, bringing back to her the memory of a temper vicious and yet some-
how' only the dark side of a glittering shield.

Chedbury had grown quiet again, and people watched Harrow come
and go up Granite Mountain. However they felt about him, he had his right
to be among them, because he had been a child there, a queer cross-
grained hungry monolith of a boy whom they had seen without notice
when he had lugged baskets in and out of their kitchens; whom now,
though they found Mm repulsive, they respected reluctantly. The weekly
paper gave him no notice, and Chuck Williams, the editor, took pride
in reading Ms name in gossip columns of city papers and literary essays
in magazines and then in continuing to take no notice. Even when the new
book came out, he might take no notice.

In the midst of all this Edward was wakened at two o’clock one morning
by the clangor of the telephone in the haU. He rose at once and lifted the
receiver and heard his mother’s distracted voice.

‘‘Edward, your father’s been taken very sick.”

“What is it. Mother?”

“He can’t speak to me—” Her voice cracked into a sob.

“Have you called the doctor?”

“No. I didn’t know what to do.”

“Fll call him and then be right up.”

He put up the telephone and went softly into Margaret’s room. She lay
high on her pillows, her long hair braided over her shoulder, her eyes
closed in sleep. Tired as he was every night, it had been a long time since
he had seen her asleep, and shielding her face from the flashlight he used
at night, he was struck with the thinness of her cheeks. He was so close
to her and yet somehow they had made no true communication for a
long time. He was too busy— so busy that he had neglected to keep his
promise to her, made when she said she would marry him. He had let their
marriage become secondary to him. That was the problem of a man’s life
—how to excel in Ms work and still keep the woman close. Yet how he
loved her!

These thoughts, scarcely more than feelings, came in the instant to the
surface of his mind and he pushed them down again. He would have to
do something about it, but it could not be now. He decided not to wake
her, and still treading softly he went out and closed the door.

A few minutes later, having called Dr. Wynne and dressed himself, he
was in his car on Ms way to his father. He had persuaded himself into
buying the car a few weeks earlier, on the excuse that he needed it for
business*

“Why don’t you just say you want it?” Margaret had asked.

He had looked at her half sheepisMy. “Seems extravagant, doesn’t it?”

THE LONG LOVE

^ don’t see why/’ she had replied.' ^‘Nothmg is extravagant if yon can
pay for it”

;ActuaUy he had finally decided to buy it when he saw Tom Seaton run-^
ning around in a small roadster on God knew what business. If Tom could
buy a car, surely he with his sound progress could do so. He had spent
his spare time for a week learning to run it and now it submitted to
him pleasantly and increased his sense of power. An occasion such as this,
he argued, when his father was taken suddenly ill, justified a car.

He spent the last few minutes thinking about his father. With remorse
he reminded himself that he had had no time for months to think about
him. The old man had grown increasingly quiet in the office and for days
past Edward scarcely remembered seeing him beyond a hasty greeting in
the morning. Baynes had run up from New York once or twice every week
to confer, and while at first their father had come in to sit with them, in
the last fortnight he had not, and they had not noticed, or at least had not
spoken of it. Strange how a man’s parents, who had been the center of his
existence, the spoke upon which the wheel of his life turned, moved out of
the center into the periphery and so, he supposed, away forever.

With a sense of impending and inescapable loss, he hastened out of his
car and into the house. No one met him and he went straight upstairs to
his father’s room and opened the door. His father lay on his back in the
big double bed where his parents had slept together all these years and
his mother sat beside the bed in a small rocking chair tilted forward so that
she leaned upon the covers, holding the pale stiff hand. The sound of his
father’s hard quick breathing filled the room with an angry pulse of sound.
The doctor had not yet come.

**Oh, Edward,” his mother moaned.

He went near the bed. ''When did this happen, Mother?”

“I don’t know. I was asleep and then I woke up and felt him in the mid-
dle of the bed~he always has taken the middle of the bed— and I told him
to move over, just as I do every night. He always does, but tonight he
didn’t. I gave him a push— just a little one— and felt him so queer and heavy
that I put on the light and this is the way he was. He can’t even speak to me.
Oh, Edward, you don’t think—”

“Of course not.” He sat down on the bed and looked at his father.
Some sort of dreadful subterranean force was moving in that patient lean
frame. The left side of his father’s face was dragged down, and a drool of
saliva crept over his chin.

Edward took his own handkerchief and wiped it away. “The doctor will
be here in a minute.”

“He’s been worrying too much,” his mother moaned. “Every night he
came home scared to death of what you boys are doing at the office.
You shouldn’t have borrowed money on the printing shop, Edward. That
really belongs to him.”

He had a glimpse in his mother’s haggard face, made strange by the

602

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

gray hair that himg loose against her cheeks, of what it meant to grow
old. The old ceased to create. They grew afraid of all change, knowing
the monstrous change ahead. They wanted no more to build, but only to
shelter themselves. Then his own youth asserted itself. “Fm responsible,
Mother,” he said with an impatience which shamed him but which he could
not help. “I wish Father would stop worrying.”

The doorbell rang and without waiting for his mother to reply he has-
tened downstairs to meet the doctor.

“Hello, Ed,” the young doctor said. He was still too young to show sleep-
less nights and long hours. His predecessor, Dr. Sulley, who had been young
with Dr. Hart, the old minister, had died the year before in Florida, that
land of rest and joy to which he had sent so many patients, and to which
he had never found time to go until he was ready to die. Wynne had
taken up the practice and was now engaged in a struggle to make his
patients come to bis office instead of demanding that he got to see them.

“Who does he think he is?” Chedbury growled, forgetting that its people
had killed the old doctor.

“What’s happened?” the new doctor asked, following Edward up the
stairs.

“Fm afraid to guess,” Edward said.

They went into the room together and within a minute the doctor had
made his quick examination.

“Your mother had better go out and rest while I finish,” he told Edward.
Without a word she rose, and left the room. The old man she had loved
and tended for so many years had now become a male patient and she was
a stranger to him. They heard her begin to sob in the hail. The doctor was
a kind man. “Better go with her,” he said to Edward. “But come back in a
minute.”

He went out then and putting his arm about his mother’s shoulders he
patted her, not knowing how to comfort her. Her shoulder felt unfamiliar.
Not since he was a child had he touched her and then he had lain his head
upon her breast. She had been closer to him than any living creature and
now she was an old woman, separated from himself by distances, unspoken
and unspeakable. But he had the wisdom to know that she must do some-
thing for relief.

“If it isn’t asking too much, Mother, I wish you would make us all some
coffee. Fm sure Wynne would be glad of it and so would I.”

She turned obediently to the stairs and he went back into the bedroom.

“Obviously a stroke,” Wynne said. “A pretty bad one, I’m afraid. I’d
better send a nurse. It’s too much for your mother to manage. I wish Ched-
bury had a hospital. He can’t stand the trip to Boston.”

“I was afraid of a stroke,” Edward murmured. His father’s thin face was
congested with purple blood and now his left side was very much drawn.

“Fve given him something,” Wynne said. “Where’s the telephone?”

“In the hail,” Edward replied.

THE EONG LOVE 603

■ He sat down in the chair where his mother had been and gazed at Ms
■father. Strange 'and terrifying to think that he might never hear his father
speak again! Now that it was possible he wished that he had taken time In
these last months to listen' to his father’s voice. Yet he could not have
acted otherwise , than he had done. . His opportunity had come to him, as in
another time his father’s had come, and he had been compelled to seize it.
Had he yielded to his father’s fears, had he let Harrow go elsewhere, he
might have subsided into a mere printer again, running a small local busi-
ness. As it was, he had begun to have tentacles over the whole world. Only
yesterday Ben Ashton, the postman, had with some pride tossed upon Ms
desk letters from England and France. “Looks like you’re gettin’ to be
somebuddy, Ed,” he had cackled. It was true, Harrow had ceased to be a
human being; he had become a most valuable property.

TMs was the inescapable tragedy of life, then, that the generations with-
drew from each other, and as he felt the strange pain of separation some-
where deep in his vitals, he loved his father with sudden anguish. He put
out his hands and enclosed within them his father’s stiff cool hand.

A week later, after days made hideous by the demands of the engine he
had set in motion to sell Harrow’s new book, a machine which he could
neither stop nor deny in its exorbitant demand upon Ms time, a week during
which he worked day and night, rushing between the office and his father’s
bedside, in which he did not try to go home, in which he saw Margaret only
in passing and then at his parents’ house with Ms mother, he and Louise
and Baynes gathered hastily at what was to be a deathbed.

His mother was in the rocking chair again, where she had sat almost
continuously during the week. She had got up to wash, to put on a clean
dress, to eat something when Margaret called. But she would not go un-
less Louise took her place. Louise had found a substitute teacher and had
not left the house for three days. Baynes had come from New York, leaving
Sandra to fill his engagements. When the nurse came out of the silent room
to call them in, Edward had paused for a moment with Margaret. They
were in his old bedroom, she resting upon his bed and he in the green rep
armchair that had been his Christmas present the year he was fifteen.

He had risen at the sight of the nurse and when she had gone away
quickly, he had turned to Margaret, his heart beating with strange and ter-
rible fear. She had looked at him from the pillow, and he saw that she did
not want to come with him,

“I have never seen anybody die,” she said in a tight frightened voice.

“Neither have I,” he replied.

“Ned— I don’t want to be there.”

He left her without a word and had not reached the hall before he felt
her hands clasping his arm.

“Ned, don’t hate me.”

“Of course not— only you mustn’t delay me now,”

604

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Her hands dropped from his arm and he hastened into his father’s room^
his heart still beating hard with the strange new fear, an animal fear, he
thought, as he took his place beside the bed. The presence of the nurse
made them all feel strange. They were not alone together. He moved to
his mother and knelt down and put his arm about her shoulder, but she
did not heed him. Ail her being was concentrated on the dying man whom
she had loved and scolded and cared for and resented and still loved in
the cycle of their married life. Baynes looked pale and grave and Louise
was crying and the nurse waited quietly for familiar death. It came in a
moment, without struggle but with a raucous rattle and choking. Mark
Haslatt was dead.

Edward bowed his head on the bed and felt his mother’s arms go round
his shoulder. He could not think or feel. Then with sudden clarity some-
thing occurred to him— ^Tt’ll have to be only Haslatt Brothers now,” and
with these unspoken words he was able to perceive his loss.

Yet life resumed its sway. Within a pitifully few days he had consigned
to earth the body of his father and he knew himself the master of his own
existence. Though he had not for years taken with sense of obligation any-
thing that his father said, yet that gray shape pervading his days had
asserted its claim. Now all claim was gone and memory alone could go to
work, unhampered by the living presence, to reconstruct the harassed,
silent, and yet kindly man who had been his father. To his father he owed
the sound foundation of his business and the principles of industry and
caution to which with all his present preoccupation he still held. Prudence
he had inherited from his father, and with it he wielded power over Baynes
and Sandra, who had none. With prudence, too, he dealt with Lewis Har-
row, compelling him to finish his book before the day when he planned
formally to open his house by a great party that was to include everybody
in Chedbury. “Open house for three days,” Harrow declared lavishly, “day
and night,” he added. “Anybody can come any time.”

Harrow had been repulsively pleased at the death of Mark Haslatt. “The
sere and yellow leaf,” he had called him with scant concealment from Ed-
ward and none at all from Baynes. Now that he was dead, Harrow was
decent enough not to mention the old man, and he renewed his demands
upon Haslatt Brothers, asking for outrageous advances and guarantees of
advertisements. Now that his father was gone, Edward found himself re-
newing his prudence, so that actually the voice of his father was stronger
in him than it had been in life.

Hearing this voice he met Harrow firmly one day the next winter. “The
Eagle has cost me some odd thousands more than I expected,” Harrow
came in to announce. Arrogant with his own value he had taken on the
habit of entering Edward’s office unannounced. This Jane had at first for-
bidden, but doing battle twice or thrice with Harrow’s unchecked tongue,
which could return at any hint of enmity to his boyhood rudeness, she

THE LONG. LOVE

■605

now paid him no heed; Some time or other, she reasoned, Edward would
have enough of the fellow. At night kneeling by her bed in her old-fashioned
cotton nightgown, her feet cold upon the bare floor of her virginal room,'
she 'prayed for the time to come soon.

Edward looked up from his desk, his dark eyes cold. ''Well?” ■

"I’d like a couple of thousand advance, Ed.”

■ "You’ve had a couple of thousand,” Edward replied, busy with papers.

■ Harrow sat down. "Come now, Ed—”

"I’m here.” ,

"You know you stand to get rich off me,”

■ "If I ever get your book.”

"It’s nearly done,. I tell you.”

"I haven’t seen a page of it”

"God, what’s the matter with you? I thought there’d be some life in this
firm when the old man went”

"Plenty of life,” Edward said. He did not look at Harrow.

"Well,” Harrow cried with high impatience, "what you want me to do?”

"Finish your book.”

There was a long pause in which Edward read carefully a proposed
contract for Spanish rights in the book he had not seen.

"Is that final?” Harrow demanded.

"Wholly,” Edward replied.

Harrow bounced from his chair and tore from the room. Two weeks
later, during which time no one saw him, he came down Granite Mountain
carrying a great bundle wrapped in brown paper. He threw it upon Ed-
ward’s desk. "Here it is,” he shouted. "Now cough up, will you?”

"You’ve upset the ink,” Edward said. He touched a bell and Jane came to
the door, looking grim. "Bring a cloth, Jane,” he said.

She returned with the same grim look and mopped up the ink. Only when
she had gone did Edward allow himself to turn to Harrow.

"Complete?” he asked.

"Not a page missing,” Harrow declared. "Where’s my two thousand
dollars?”

Edward rejected prudence and to get rid of the man that he might de-
vour the book, he drew a checkbook from the drawer of his desk and
knowing it madness he made it out for two thousand dollars. His balance
was dangerously low, and if that for which he had gambled escaped him,
he would have to mortgage his very home. For the first time he was glad
that his father was dead.

All afternoon, the great heap of brown paper stood on the end of his
desk. He did not dare to begin to read it here. He would not read it until
tonight when the children were in bed and he and Margaret were alone.
The dread of disappointment dried his very blood. He drank again and
again from the water jug on the window and in half an hour was thirsty
again. There was no one to keep him from glancing at the first pages and

iUlvJERICAN TEIFTYCe.

yet lie would not have done so for any amount of money. How absurd, he
told himself, to be in the power of one man and such a man as Harrow! He
'had no idea' when be thought of publishing books that it would be a- busi»
ness^ so racking, so dangerous, so devastating. He prayed only that the book
might be clearly good or bad. Then he could make his decision. If it were
mildly good and not too bad the agony of the present would stretch into
months and even years. Let it be good or bad! He was ashamed as a
decent Christian to address God with so personal a plea, surely petty in
view of the enormous problems now in the world after the war, and yet
in his heart he did murmur these words. Immediately they became ridicu-
lous since in fact the book was already finished, it was what it would be,
and not even God could do anything about it. He set himself to work
doggedly until six o’clock as usual, pausing only to call Baynes in New
York by telephone.

“Baynes, that you? I just wanted to say that Harrow has handed in the
manuscript. I’m reading it tonight.”

Baynes gave a cry of anguish. “Call me at dawn, will you?”

“No, I won’t. But I ought to have some sort of notion tomorrow morn-
ing when I come to the office.”

“I shan’t sleep a wink,” Baynes declared.

“Maybe I won’t, either,” Edward replied and hung up.

It had taken all his self-control not to hurry the evening for the children.
With rigorous discipline he had compelled himself to conversation through
dinner, to ten minutes of nursery rhymes for Sandy and to the reading
aloud of The Swiss Family Robinson, which he had undertaken as part
of the winter’s reading for Mary and Tommy. He had said to Margaret in
what he hoped was his usual voice, “I shall be up late tonight—Harrow
brought me his complete manuscript today.”

Interminably the evening wore on, the children were prepared for bed,
and he went up to hear their prayers. A vague sense of hypocrisy always
troubled him when he saw their innocent faith. He no longer prayed in
exact words, and yet he felt that religion was decent and right, an essential
m an honest man’s life, however expressed. Prayer was a part of religion,
he reasoned, and children should be taught its use, without being promised
definite returns. Tonight he tried gently to persuade Mary not to pray for a
bicycle, since he had no idea of buying it for her. He did not like to see
women cycle. It thickened their legs and destroyed their delicacy. When
Tommy prayed for an air rifle for his birthday, however, he considered
whether the boy was big enough for it and decided that he was. Some
discrepancy between his decisions for Ms daughter and for his son dis-
turbed him, until it struck him that perhaps God Himself was thus com-
pelled to decide between His asking children. For some the gift was unwise;
for others, it was possible. This might be the Reason behind the Inscrutable
Wisdom.

The children were in bed at last, and with the pleasant comfort of know-

THE LONG LOVE

■ ' 607 '

Mg that he was a good father Edward went, mto his room and changed to
his: old blue dressing robe. When he went downstairs Margaret was already
sitting by the fire in her favorite red velvet chair. She was making lace on a
small frame, a task which she learned as a young girl one summer M'
France and which she declared was soothing to the nerves. He appreciated
invariably the picture that she made, and he smiled at, her as he drew up
^ a ^ side table and prepared for the hours, ahead.,-

''Don’t you want to read Lew’s manuscript, too?” he inquired. ■

■ Margaret did not look up. "No, thank you, Ned. Fll wait until the book
Is printed.” This she said with lack of interest which, in his eagerness, he
: did not notice.

He went into the hall and brought back the enormous parcel, and putting
it on the floor at his feet he began to unwrap it, as he sat in his own chair
opposite her. Between them the wood fire burned pleasantly under the mar-
ble mantelpiece. Looking up to meet Margaret’s eyes, he found she had
not lifted them from her lace.

"Next to various moments with you, my dear,” he said, trying not to
seem excited, "I suppose this is the most exciting moment of my life.”

"Perhaps it is even the most exciting,” she answered.

There was something of an edge in her voice which at another time he
might have explored, but tonight he could not bear to be diverted.

“You know better than that,” he retorted, and immediately he lifted
the first chapters from the stack between his feet and began to read.

The scene was Chedbury. Harrow had used the very name. A scrawled
note at the top of the first page said, "Call the town anything you like, m
prmting, but I had to write it what it is.”

The book began with a small wretched boy in a meager house on the
fringe of the prosperous little town, a boy whose father was a drunkard
and whose mother was a laundress. Harrow had determined to write his
life out, not only as it was, but in all its ramifications in a society that did
not care how he lived and not too much whether he died, except that the
townsfolk were reluctant to pay for too many paupers’ funerals. Edward
plunged mto a Chedbury he had never known.

At eleven o’clock Margaret put her lace frame away into a rosewood
sewing cabinet.

He looked up reluctantly. "Going to bed?”

"Yes, Ned.”

She came over to him and bending she kissed his forehead. His hands
were full of pages, and he could only throw back his head, "Kiss me
properly, Margaret,” he demanded.

She stooped again and kissed him on the lips. "When are you coming
up, Ned?”

"I don’t know, dear. I think Fll stay by this as long as I can,”

"Why must you?”

"I’ve gambled too much and I must know if Fll wm.”

AMEI^CAN TRIPTYCH

She looked down at him half wistfully, and he looked up at her, aware
again of something not said between them, and yet again he could not bear
to be drawn from the urgency of what he wanted to do.

^'Good night, my love,” he said.

“Good night, Ned” she replied.

For a moment he heard her step slowly mounting the stairs, and then he
forgot her. He was back in Lewis Harrow’s world again, a world which
in strange subterranean fashion was also his own.

Hours later he put down the last page silently. He had finished the book.
He had no doubts and yet he was full of doubt. He had gambled and he
had won. Lewis Harrow had written a great book. Haslatt Brothers could
build upon a foundation as solid as Granite Mountain itself. Money would
continue to flow from the book for Harrow as long as he lived, and for
Edward and his family as well. Upon the profits of this treasure Edward
foresaw the delight of publishing other books which he might like but
which could not possibly pay—a book, for example, upon the varieties of
printing types, their history, and their use, a book for the makers of books
and not for the writers.

This was his first thought when he had laid down that last page. The fire
on his hearth was a heap of ashes, and every voice in his house was stilled
in sleep. He alone was awake and knowing, his exhausted mind alive with
unnatural awareness. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The
book was cruel, of course. It spared nothing and no one— not even the lean
ferocious boy who had grown up, in Harrow’s imagination, to be a man
greatly rich through the making of steel. Why had he chosen steel? The
man loved steel for its purity and its hardness. Harrow had put some love
of his own into the symbol. But there were pages of human love, and these
were the pages that frightened Edward. The variety was exciting and
shameful, and then in the end came one so tender and so exquisite that it
did not seem Harrow could know such love. He began to be afraid of the
man. Ribaldry and physical lust he took for granted in him, but where had
he got this power for tender Worship of a woman remote to him?

Now deep doubt came flooding darkly into Edward’s solitary mind.
There was no possibility of concealment. He recognized the truth too well.
The woman who had called forth this sweetness out of a man powerful
and crude was one fashioned into an image he well knew, and it was the
image of his own wife.

Some time later, having fumbled the pages together and tied the brown
paper parcel as it had been, he got up and put out the lights and went
upstairs. On all other nights he was used to stealing into Margaret’s room
and at least looking at her before he slept. But tonight he did not go in.
The door between was ajar as she had left it, and he closed it noiselessly
and prepared for bed. He saw from the small clock on his table that it was
nearly five o’clock, and his blood was beating in his veins with weariness.
He would not be able to sleep, he told himself. Yet his mind was unable

THE LONG, LOVE

to thmk^. He lay' B'umb under the covers and felt the night wind- blow
upon him from the /open window. Then the numbness penetrated him like
a drag, and postponing his fears, he slept in spite of himself.

He woke late 'in the morning. The sun' shone whitely Into his south
window and he saw a rim of snow. In the night then it had snowed. There
was a heap of snow upon the window sill. He started up and looked at his
watch-nine o’clock. The house was silent about him. The children were
already ■ at school, and , Margaret must have breakfasted. ■ He heard
Sandy’s voice now upon the stairs and Margaret’s hush.

Then he remembered. He lay back, quite still. Harrow had had the
audacity to use the very woman Margaret was, her soft dark hair, her sea-
blue eyes, her slenderness and height, even the shape of her hands and her
high-arched feet. He had dared to imagine the shape of her breasts, her
waist, her thighs.

Intolerable doubt! Edward rose from his bed and stirred with unusual
noisiness about his room.

‘Tapa got up!” he heard his little daughter’s voice cry out, and a moment
later Margaret tapped upon the door and came in. He was shaving and
he kissed her lightly.

“You should have waked me,” he grumbled.

“I wouldn’t have done it for money,” she retorted. “You look a ghost,
Ned.”

“I’m all right.”

He continued to scrape his rather long chin while she stood waiting.
When he did not speak she could refrain no more.

“How was the book?”

“Absolutely first rate.”

“Was it?”

“Yes.”

“Then, Ned-”

“Yes?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. Well, maybe— I guess he’s taken the hide off some of us Ched-
bury folk, and I’m worried— a little.”

“Oh, he’s stupid!”

“No, he isn’t— he’s too smart. Anybody stupid would have changed things
so no one would know. He’s so smart he’s dared say all he wanted to say.”

“I don’t think I’m going to read it.”

“You’ll have to someday, Margaret.”

She looked at him curiously, and he fancied a reflection of his own doubt
in her watching eyes. When their eyes met and clung it was she who looked
away. “Don’t worry, Ned. And come down— your breakfast is waiting.”

She went away with her brisk wifely step, so much the woman he had
known since the day of his marriage that he felt assuaged. Then the dam-

610

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH-

nabie quality of Harrow’s book occurred to him again. There the woman’s
husband, who' had possessed her so long,- did not know her at' all. The
man did not know, dull fellow, that worship was his wife’s due, and that
in such worship he would have found his own delight. Edward longed upon
a strange- and sudden impulse' to rush downstairs and find' Margaret wher-
ever she was and cry out to her, crushed in Ms arms, -“There is no one
who could possibly love you as I do!” His natural shyness moved to restrain
such monstrous revelation. She would look surprised, she would open her
eyes wide. She might even laugh.

He went on with his dressing, more than a little angry at his predicament.
Here on a morning when he should be filled only with relief and satisfaction
at his own good fortune, when he should have been distracted by nothing
that could check his energy, he felt depressed and doubtful. He distrusted
his imagination, disturbed by the workings of something so insubstantial
as Lewis Harrow’s own. What matter if the fellow was attracted to Marga-
ret? Men could be thus attracted to a delicately bred woman, especially
lawless lowbred fellows, and it did not mean that the woman even knew
it He was insulting her by his doubts. It would be only decent to keep
them to himself, certainly for the present.

Comforted by the righteousness of delay, he chose a somber gray tie
that did not lighten in the least his dark suit, and feeling arrayed to fit
his mood he went downstairs and ate his morning meal. Margaret sat in
her place, and though she had eaten, she poured his coffee and supervised
the prattle and play of Sandy, who had built some blocks into a structure
in the corner. The uniformity of his outward surroundings was deeply com-
forting. The day was like any other day, and that was what he wanted.
He looked at Margaret and she smiled. Certainly she did not know what
Harrow had done, and he would not tell her.

An hour later he was further comforted by the everyday appearance
of his office. Jane was accustomedly cross when he came in late. “I don’t
know when you’re going to get your letters done,” she remarked when he
had sat down in his swivel desk chair. The snow was melting and dripping
down the windowpanes, and he could hear the whir of machinery as he
opened the door.

“I want to talk to Baynes first,” he said. “The letters will have to wait.”

The telephone operator was in a good mood, the hour fortunate, and
in a very few moments he was calling through to New York,

“That you, Baynes?”

“Yes.”

“WeU, aren’t you going to ask me?”

“No. Aren’t you going to tell me?”

Edward laughed. He had not the heart to continue the cruelty of teasing
his younger brother. “Well, all we wanted it to be— it is,”

“You mean—”

“Yes, I do. He’s done something even bigger than the first one.”

THE LONG. LOVE

611

ho.ly cats!” , ■

: "It’s too^ loHg, but I don’t know how to shorten it by a word. There: is
a scene or , two, an episode, I could take out altogether.”

His smoldering doubt suddenly leaped into suggestion. Why should he
not, complain of the length to Harrow- and insist that the pages-he could
remember them even now-the pages between four hundred and twenty-
ive and ive hundred be eliminated? After all, the woman had come In at
the very end of the book unheralded except for 'the desire that had sought
her around the world. He spoke to Baynes, again.

"Yes, I think I may insist on a few cuts— only one of any importance.
But there’s nothing to hold us up. I’ll want to see the artist myself for the
jacket drawing. It ought to be a scene— something like the one I am looking
at this very minute out of my office window, the green sloping up to the
church and the Seaton house in the foreground, the firehouse, of course,
and the store, maybe a snow scene. By the way, we had snow last night-
very soft. Well have to work hard and fast now, Baynes.”

"Sandra thinks we ought to have a big dinner on the day of publication.
Get all the critics together and so on.”

"Whatever you like.”

"You mean that?” Baynes demanded with excitement.

"For once, yes.”

He hung up the receiver and sat for a moment staring upon the scene
he was planning for the jacket. He ought to call Harrow, but there was no
telephone to The Eagle. Harrow did not want one. There was nothing to
do but wait until the fellow came down the mountain.

In a mood of arrested doubt and of genuine enjoyment he went into
the printing shop. The presses rolling off the sheets of the books he had
chosen for his firm gave him a pleasant sense of power. He, Edward Haslatt,
here m his quiet, purposely old-fashioned office in a small town in an un-
important region of his country, could entice to himself living, thinking
people from anywhere in the world, whose minds flamed and exploded
into creation.

He had been proud to receive some weeks ago a thin manuscript of
poems from a young man in a valley of the Cotswolds. A year ago he
would not have dared to publish so risky a venture, but thanks to Lewis
Harrow, he had accepted the poems as soon as he had read them and
perceived their elements of emotion and pride. He paused beside the press,
which was being run by John Carosi, and watched the wide margins, the
thick cream paper imprinted in short black lines. He had chosen his latest
text type, Poliphus, thick and warm, carrying the illusion of an ancient
art. Was it, he pondered, suitable for the young poet? But like so many
young, the lines of this poet, in spite of their originality, had echoed.
Edward had decided upon the book, not so much for what it was as for
the implications of feeling and imagination which gave promise of future
richness in the talent.

612

AMBRICAN TRIPTSfCH

yon ever read any of the sheets you print?” he ashed,

Carosi looked at him, surprised. Edward Haslatt did not often speak to
the men he employed.

“I don’t,” he said curtly. ‘‘If I did, I couldn’t tend the machine. Like as
not the ink would be runny.”

He bent his head, and Edward went on, pleased enough. He was printing
books that were simple, too simple, perhaps, to be called fine. Yet there
was elegance in their simplicity, and with elegance came good style. He
pondered as he went back to his desk the answer that had been given him.
For machines he himself cared nothing. He did not understand them. Cogs
and wheels, he called them, and they were blind slaves formed only to
give shape and permanence to the thoughts of men. He had grown far
beyond his father, who had, he remembered, an actual tenderness for the
machines he had bought with such careful economy. What was printed by
them Mark Haslatt scarcely cared— advertisements, announcements of mar*
riage and death, bills of sale, posters, and notices. Edward had inherited
something from him, but it was fulfilled by a quality entirely his own.
Machines were no more than means.

So ruminating, at ease because he had won, Edward circumvented the
core of his inner unease. But when he opened the door to his office he
felt a shock. Lewis Harrow sat in the swivel chair, his feet on the desk,
and he was roaring with laughter into the telephone. He shouted as Edward
came in, “I’ll be there— to celebrate either my victory or my defeat. Here
comes God! . . . Well,” he said, and shambled to his feet.

“Don’t get up,” Edward said with acid courtesy.

“I had pins in my seat while I sat there,” Harrow retorted. He dropped
into the chair across the desk. “Out with it, Ed. Do you like my book?”

“How can I help it?” Edward asked. “You know as well as I do what
you have done. It is wonderful and terrible. But it’s too long.”

“Now if you start meddling,” Harrow began violently.

Edward held up his hand. “I want it seventy-five pages shorter.”

Harrow leaped to his feet “Give me the manuscript!”

“What for?”

“I’ll take it to New York.^^

“Sit down, you fool,” Edward said with patience. “I want you to take
out the part about that last woman.”

Harrow sat down, snarling. “You publish it as it is or you shan’t have it”

“She doesn’t add anything,” Edward said stubbornly. “You had the book
all written without her, and then you dragged her in.”

Harrow groaned aloud. “If you’d just forget you aren’t the author—”
He leaned forward, his square blocked face red with swift anger. “Look
here, Ed. Can’t you see that it’s implied—”

“What’s implied?” Edward asked grimly.

“That she’s changed his life by being inaccessible.”

“Oh, she’s inaccessible, is she?”

THE LONG LOVE

613

"Sure she is.”

, Against his better judgment, goaded by his living jealousy, Edward said,
‘^How does he know what her body looks like?”

, Harrow refused to accept , the knowledge of what was going on in Ed-
ward’s mind. “Don’t you see that my man knows what women are? Out of
the' dozen End more, women he’s lived with, slept with, bought, loved—
hasn’t he learned something? Given a- height, a shape, a narrow hand,
flying black hair, blue eyes, a high-arched foot— can’t he imagine?”

“It’s obscene,” Edward blurted.

There was a tight silence, then Harrow spoke. “You’re obscene.”

The silence fell again. Edward stared down at a little white elephant
upon his desk, a desk toy Thomas Seaton had given him one Christmas,
ivory weighted with lead.

“What’s more,” Harrow said suddenly, “you don’t deserve her. Someday
I shall tell her so.”

He rose, flung on his shapeless hat, and strode out of the room.

And with him went all the joy of the great day. Edward sat motionless,
leaning upon his desk, his hand shading his eyes. He could not endure
the torment of his jealousy. It boiled up in him and he leaped to his feet
and strode after Harrow and catching him in the outer hall he held him
by the shoulder.

“Come back here and tell me what you mean! If it’s what I think, you
can take your filthy book with you,”

He would have welcomed anger in return, so intolerable was his fury.
Instead Harrow’s strange tawny eyes were remote and calm.

“Sure 111 come back,” he said. His voice showed only mild interest

In the office again, however, the door closed, he looked at Edward with
greedy curiosity. “I’ve never seen you angry before, Ed— it’s quite a sight.
A quiet man can really put on a show.”

“It’s not show.” A chill came over him as he answered Harrow. He
always shivered with cold when his anger drained away. He tried to moisten
his lips but his mouth was dry.

“No, I see it isn’t” Harrow’s voice was musing. He sighed. “How I hate
real life!”

Edward did not answer this. He found his pipe in his pocket and lit it,
and looking up, saw that Harrow perceived that his hands were trembling.

“Men like you, Ed,” Harrow said, “live only in real life. Men like me
only use you, and your wives and your children, to write about real life.”

“You’d better leave us alone.”

“I might be of use to you, though, if you’ll accept that of me.” Harrow
was stubbornly casual.

“Your usefulness is limited to business,” Edward retorted and then
winced at the pedantry of his words. Why could he not invest his voice
with that silver-edged carelessness which sharpened the dullest words? He
could not. He was solid, plodding maybe, but without veneer.

614

AMERIGAN TRIPTYCH

Harrow laughed and slapped the desk with his palms. ^^Edj will you
hear something from me?”

‘^Maybe,”

“Maybe is must, then! You’re a fool—thafs first”

Edward, sitting now behind the desk, pulled hard on Ms pipe in lieu of
answer. Harrow leaned on his elbows. “Second, if you’ll let me go on, your
wife, though beautiful, is impregnable. You don’t deserve such luck.”

“I’d rather you didn’t speak of her.”

“Don’t be such a fool, Ed! I will speak of her, do you hear?”

Harrow’s face, so near his across the desk, grew harsh. It was an ugly
face, heavy featured, dark, lit only by light eyes and wMte teeth and chang-
ing expression. Eyes and teeth gleamed at him now.

“Of course I’d have been glad to win her away from you. What have
you done to deserve her? Can you even appreciate what she is? I doubt it!”

“Stop!” His voice roared at Harrow, strange in his own ears. “You
haven’t the least idea of the— the relationship between my— my wife and
myself. You— you— it takes years to build what we have— and a sort of devo-
tion that you have no notion of.”

He was on Ms feet, shouting at Harrow, His pipe dropped to the floor and
a coal of tobacco fell on the carpet and began to burn a hole. He stamped
on it and looking down for the moment he heard Harrow laugh softly,

“Don’t I know it, man?” Harrow’s voice came softly over the desk.
“That’s why she’s impregnable. With all your manifold faults, every one
of which you may be sure she sees, she knows what she has and she’ll
never let herself escape from it. She’s accepted the prison of your love.”

“It’s not a prison.”

“Sometimes it is,” Harrow insisted. “But most of the time it’s a wailed
garden, and every day she throws away the key to the gate, so she’ll never
yield to temptations.”

“Is she ever—” He could not bring out the word.

“Tempted?” Harrow’s voice was delicately cheerful. “Of course she is.
Who isn’t?”

“I’m not.”

“That’s the wall around the garden. She knows you, Ed. Take heart
from that. It isn’t every man who can be known through and through and
have his wife value him the more.”

A strange reverence crept into Harrow’s bantering. “Why, Ed, you’re
a fool not to live your life in joy. You do possess your wife. Do you know
how few men can say that and know it’s true? You’re cursed with humility.”

“Only because she’s too good for me, of course.” Edward ground out
these words from the tightness of Ms heart cursing Harrow for his searching
shrewdness.

“She’s not too good for you,” Harrow retorted. “No woman can be too
good for what you give your wife.”

THE LONG' LOVE

615

His eyes fell on Ms: w^ watch and he leaped to his feet. ‘‘I have to
■ catch a train in ten minutes— promised Fd be' in New York.”

He caught up his hat and ran out, banging the door. Alone Edward sat
without moving. He felt spent, not being used, he supposed, to release of
emotions. For a\ moment he could not- collect himself. Then there -came'
creeping into his veins- a warmth of transfusion, He remembered again
what Harrow had said. Margaret, his wife, was impregnable.' His love kept
her inviolate. Then , she knew how he loved her. He had never been able
to tell her entirely, but she knew.

His comfort was short. For how did Harrow know even this about her
unless he had had most intimate talk with Margaret? What had they said?
How much had Margaret revealed and why? Harrow would henceforward
be an unwanted third in their most secret life.

He heard the door open but he did not look up.

'‘You ready to answer your letters?” Jane’s voice inquired.

"No.”

She shut the door, and he continued to sit The clock in the outer office
struck twelve, and there was a stir of clerks getting ready to go to lunch.
Jane must have told them he did not want to be disturbed, for no one came
in his door. He sat another hour, breaking his despair and doubt occasion-
ally to fumble with papers, to read a letter or two, to realize that he did not
understand anything except the growing demand of his own heart to know
the truth from Margaret herself. While he had been engrossed in these
offices, intent upon the making of books and selling them, where had
Harrow been? What had he been doing when for weeks he had delayed
finishing his book, and why, when he fiinished it so swiftly, had it been to
bring into those pages— Margaret?

There was no truth to be had whole out of Lewis Harrow. That man
who so impudently comprehended what went on inside human creatures
really could understand nothing. What could he know, and how could he
know, what it meant to a man to be as he, Edward Haslatt, was a man,
firm in integrity, a faithful husband, a good father, a leading citizen whom
all respected? Lewis Harrow, knowing everything, his fertile imagination
a ferret running into the secret places of lives with which he could have
nothing to do, had crept sniffing and sucking into the precious privacy of a
house whose doors he was not fit to enter.

But the truth could be had from Margaret. This dawned upon Edward
at last with fainting hope. Margaret had never lied to him. She would not
lie to him now. He got to his feet, reached for his hat and coat, and left
his office. Seeing his grim face, no one spoke to him as he passed, not
even Jane.

His house was silent as he let himself in the front door. The children
were not yet home from school and Sandy was deep in her afternoon nap.
He hung up his hat and coat and looked into the living room. Margaret
was not there. For a moment his jealousy leaped to the possibility that she

616 ■ AMERICAN TRIPTYCH ,

was out, even now, perhaps, with Harrow. The fellow might have ran to
tell her about the talk interchanged at the office. She might be meeting him
somewhere, even perhaps in New York. More than once Margaret had
gone abruptly to the city, leaving only a note.

He checked firmly the rush of quivering fears. In common sense he must
not go to her trembling and distraught Profoundly feeling as she was, she
shrank with physical distaste from emotionalism. Surface display she could
not accept He went into the library for a moment to collect himself, and
found himself remembering instead the times, now long past, when his
instinctive jealousy had first been roused. How long she had delayed in
her decision to marry him! If she had loved him as he had loved her since
he was seventeen years old, she could not so have delayed. She had said
once that her father wanted her to marry someone in New York, a needless
thing to tell him, surely, when the man was nothing to her, and there was
the evening when he had first come to the Seaton house and she had worn
a gown so low in the bosom that it had made him uncomfortable and they
had quarreled. Then his unholy jealousy reached into the sacred hours of
his honeymoon and his startled, half-guilty delight in the freedom with
which she had dressed and undressed in his presence, a lack of modesty,
beautiful and dangerous.

Actually she had grown more modest with the years. Without words
they had come to behave with graceful courtesy that, he had imagined un-
til now, did not separate them in the least. He did not open her door without
knocking—he had not done so since Sandra was born. And she did not
come in when he was bathing. It had been their joy to have no walls of
privacy when they were first married, but they had built them again, bit by
bit, wails no stronger than mist, transparent and yet shielding. Had those
walls provided her with secrecy?

For she had changed. The old frank abruptness with which she had
once spoken her thoughts, asserting her right to wound him if she must
because in love there must be truth— this frankness she no longer had.
A silvery gentleness now enclosed her, and he was startled to realize how
long it had been since they had really spoken with communication.

At this moment he heard a door open and close, and with an impetuous-
ness entirely foreign to him he leaped to his feet and ran upstairs and
knocked at the door of her room.

She was there. He did not know, as he stood staring at her, that in his
relief his face began to work as if with tears. She had just taken from her
doset a garment of some sort. Evidently she had been resting, for the bed
was tumbled and she wore a negligee.

**You aren’t sick?” he gasped.

**No— only tired. I thought I’d rest while Sandy slept. Why, Ned, whafs
the matter?”

‘‘Nothing.” He sank down into her velvet armchair.

“Don’t be silly, Ned. You look dreadful.”

THE LONG LOVE-

617

He was speecMess, , Now that he saw her standing there in her rose
dressing gown, looking exactly as she did every morning, her dark hair
curling about her face, her eyes calm as the sea under sunshine, he felt his
heart:swell and his breath grow short. He tried to smile ■ and looked so-
ghastly that she dropped the garment she held and fell on her knees at his
■side..-..

''Ned, speak to me, do you hear? Tell me what it is.’’

His heart kept swelling until he could not get his breath, and to his
horror he heard a loud sob. It was his own.

At this she, who had never seen him weep, began suddenly to weep
herself. ‘*Oh, darling, what is it? Don’t keep it to yourself, dear. Is it the
business? Has something dreadful happened? It isn’t Tommy—or Mary?”

Her terror gave him strength, and he lifted her into his lap. "No, no—it’s
too foolish. You won’t forgive me,”

"But I’d forgive you anything.” Her head was upon his shoulder and he
felt her cheek wet

"Would you, Margaret— will you?”

“Of course— I promise. No, I don’t have to promise— you know. Oh,
Ned, you frighten me.”

“Weil, then, listen ”

And then, holding her head with his cheek upon her hair so that she
could not see his face, he told her of his doubt and his jealousy, and she
listened. But he would not tell her of what Harrow had said.

If she had grown angry with him, if her body had stiffened as she lay
silent in his arms, he would have been reassured. If she had flown at him
with some of the impetuous heat of her girlhood, which now so seldom
she did, he would have been reassured. But she lay soft and yielding in
his arms. She kept her eyes shut— he felt the lashes curling motionless un-
der his chin. Her hand lay in his, and he imagined only a quickening in
the beating of her heart as she lay against him. So there was no way for
him to know the truth except to ask for it, and having revealed himself
naked to the soul in all his folly of love, he did ask.

“I don’t want you to be afraid of me, Margaret. I don’t want my love
to be a prison. Tell me the truth. If Harrow has made love to you—”

Her voice when she spoke was soft and tired. “Is that it? But it doesn’t
matter if men make love.”

“Then he has?”

“He’s the sort that will always keep on trying.”

“But you don’t—”

“Let him, you mean? Of course not, Ned.” She sighed when she had
said these words, and still she lay in his arms, soft and inert. "It doesn’t
mean anything to me what he does, Ned. Only—”

“Only what, dear heart?”

“Are you angry with me?”

“No— but terribly afraid.”

618

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Are you satisfied with me?”

“Absolutely.”

Upon this she sat up and faced him, her bine eyes sparkling with sud-
den anger. “How can you be satisfied with me, Ned, when you don’t have
anything to say to me, when you aren’t with me, when you don’t bother to
find out anything about me, when you can even suspect me of— of listening
to Lew Harrow?” She burst into fresh weeping.

He was so comforted by her anger, so reassured by her fury, so assuaged
by her tears, that he could have laughed. He hugged her to him by force,
and when she pushed him with her hands against his breast he would not
let her loose herself from him.

“Are you satisfied with me?” he demanded.

“No,” she sobbed. “No, no, no!”

“Now,” he said firmly, “now we have something to talk about. Stop
crying and tell me what’s wrong. Stop, I say!”

He forced her to look at him, her face still streaming with tears, and he
shook her as if she were a child. “I haven’t kept my promise to you— isn’t
that what you’re thinking?”

She nodded.

“I’ve forgotten— or I’ve been too busy, it’s the same thing— to make our
marriage the most important thing in my life— isn’t that what you’re
thinking?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “It’s true. That’s exactly what you’ve done.”

“And what you’ve done,” he retorted, “is to let me go on, year after
year—”

“Because I thought you wanted to.”

“Understanding me so little,” he accused her sternly.

“Understanding you very well,” she retorted, “but not knowing how to
change you— unless you wanted yourself to change. How did I know you
weren’t tired of me? Men do outgrow their wives. But I’m so used to you
now, I can’t live except with you.”

He groaned. “Oh, Margaret, Margaret, what folly for us!”

“Is it really, Ned?” Her voice and eyes were wistful.

“Why are you humble?” he demanded. “You used never to be humble.”

“I think marriage makes women humble,” she said, half sadly, “just as
it makes men arrogant.”

“Nonsense. Your father and mother never were either.”

“Ah, but they’ve never been really married— as we are.”

“Take my parents, then.”

“They were both humble,” she said wisely. “Marriage wasn’t good for
them— not their marriage.”

They fell silent for a moment, each thinking separate thoughts. Mar-
riage, which had made them one, had begun to build a wall between
them, had separated them, too, so Edward mused. The necessity to earn a
living for them all, the necessity to be father, and she perhaps, with the

THE LONG LOVE ' 619

necessity to be mother—and yet surely somehow this was the proper course
of marriage?

looks to me as if we’d have to begin over,” he said at last. “Maybe
ifs only second wind we need.. Or maybe we need to design our' marriage
again to what we are now~the man and woman we’ve become.”

; 'Her tears had dried and she smiled. “I do love you.” She murmured the
words against his lips.

He received them far more solemnly indeed than the first time she had
uttered them so long ago, and doubt and jealousy left him suddenly and
forever.

“Do you, dear?” If there was less passion in his voice than there had
been in his youth, there was tenderness that reached from the bottom of the
sea to heaven. “I love you, too, and I want to promise you again, Mar-
garet—”

She laughed with astonishing joy, as though ten minutes ago she had not
wept her heart half broken. “Oh, promises,” she cried richly, “as if we
needed them any more!”

She got up out of his lap and pushed back her tumbled hair.

“What on earth have we been talking about?” she demanded.

“Something important,” he retorted.

“Maybe,” she said in a practical voice, and began to brush her hair.

He did not reply to this, but sat watching her, a half smile on his lips.
It had been something very important indeed. For the rest of his life he
would be a different man.

THREE

Christmas eve, of the forty-fifth year of Edward Haslatt’s life, was a
fine one. He had risen in the morning to see Chedbury deep under snow.
Over the edge of the hil! behind the spire of the church a crimson sun
shone in a clear sky. He had a feeling of profound pleasure. Christmas
was beginning just as it should. By night his children would be gathered
under his roof and his house would be full. His mother and his sister Louise
were coming for dinner, and later in the evening their usual Christmas
dance would take place. This was also a celebration of his own wedding
anniversary. He and Margaret had long ago given up trying to make a
private affair out of it, and there were times when his marriage seemed a
family rather than a personal matter.

Dallying over his dressing for breakfast, Edward reviewed the recent
years. His wedding anniversary always induced reminiscence. The difficult
quarrel which he and Margaret had carried through over Harrow’s novel
remained firm in his memory. Harrow had been damnably right, of course;
nevertheless Edward did not like to be indebted for understanding his own
wife. Yet he was indebted. In the privacy of his own room and the gloomier
hours of night he had read many times Harrow’s novel, dwelling always
upon the pages where the blue-eyed black-haired woman entered suddenly
upon the scene. With each reading he lashed his always ready conscience,
Margaret had never blamed him again for neglect.

The novel had been one of the miracles of publishing but he had no
wish to repeat it. After his conversation with Harrow about the unwanted
episode, which Harrow firmly refused to take out, Edward had referred to
it no more. He had even succeeded in removing it from his own thoughts.
With grimness he proceeded to make the book a masterful success, main-
taining a cold face toward an angry Chedbury when it recognized some of
its weaknesses skillfully painted upon the characters in Harrow’s novel.

I can lump it they can,” Edward told himself in the deep and secret
places of his own being.

622

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

He sat in Ms office, the control room of an enterprise that grew so vast
that there were times when he himself was terrified at what he, by the grace
of Harrow^ 'had achieved. His presses roiled off the editions, and he was
compelled to dangerous postponement of all other business. Even so he
could not print enough copies of the book which critics, generous and loud
in their praise of new genius, insisted was to be read by every thinking
American. People rushed to join the ranks of the thoughtful, and Harrow’s
book was on every living-room table, when any book was, and upon the
surge of popular demand Edward made Ms first motion picture sale.

His life had been upset and his digestion weakened by the constant de-
mand from Baynes and Sandra that he be present at cocktail parties and
dinners in big cities, until the press of work increased the necessity that he
stay at Ms desk. All the furor Harrow enjoyed without apparent damage.
Pie ate at all hours, drank prodigiously, and slept, he declared, on Ms feet.

Edward watched the bank deposits of his firm rise to comforting figures,
and felt for once no pricks from Ms tender conscience, for Harrow’s profits
were even greater. In these days, though Edward came and went with his
accustomed modesty, Chedbury observed a new confidence in Mm. He was
now a soundly successful man.

He had been staggered, however, one Monday morning when little Mrs.
Walters killed herself. No one expected it. She had read the book bravely,
ignoring to her closest friends the clearly drawn portrait of her husband,
dead so many years ago. She had even come to Edward after church the
Sunday before and among Chedbury folk, standing about in the sunshine
of the green she had chirped, “I tMnk Town Square is simply wonderfulP^

^‘It is a great book, though a harsh one, Edward had replied. “Perhaps
Harrow will mellow with years,” he had added, after looking down into
Mrs. Waiters’ white wrinkled little face.

“Oh, of course he willl” she had trilled.

That night she had taken the shocking overdose of sleeping pills, and
Edward had understood with grateful pity that her courage of the day
before had perhaps been in preparation and apology.

He had weathered with outward calm the bitter and even angry surmises
of Chedbury, and prudently he had sent only a modest offering of flowers
to the bier. Anything more would have been construed by Chedbury as
the expression of a guilty conscience. To Harrow, however, he spoke pri-
vately and forcibly.

“You see what happens when you tamper with real life.”

Harrow had shrugged his heavy shoulders. “How little you understand
people, Ed! If she hadn’t wanted to die she wouldn’t have killed herself.
I gave her the excuse, that’s all. I’m sure she was grateful.”

He stared across the room with eyes so remote and all-seeing that Ed-
ward had said no more. That ni^t, however, he told Margaret what Har-
row had said to him. They had sat late after the children went to bed,

■ THE LONG LOVE ■ ' 623 .

and then before going upstairs themselves they had taken a turn or two in
the garden, arm in arm.

“A queer thing to say, wasn’t it?” he had remarked.

*^Yes,” Margaret had replied, “and yet like so many things Lew says, it
can’t be denied because perhaps it’s true.”

He digested this remark in silence, admitting its accuracy. The wind
had blown cool as they reached the far end of the garden, and so they had
gone in, ■

As though the death of old Mrs. Walters had been relief enough for
anger, Chedbury relapsed into its usual somnolence after the funeral, and
Harrow went on with energy to finish his monstrous house on Granite
Mountain and to plunge into his next novel,

Edward conceded in his more melancholy moods that while Haslatt
Brothers were highly respectable publishers they were not spectacular, ex-
cept for Lewis Harrow’s books. Two or three lesser successes, produced
by discoveries of Baynes and Sandra, had barely enabled him to maintain
his independence before Harrow. There had been nothing further between
them of personal matter, and Edward subdued his continuing annoyance
at the easy way in which Harrow came and went in this house. Except for
the weeks and months of fierce concentration, when Harrow lived aloof
and alone on Granite Mountain, there was nothing sacred. For the last
week Harrow had been incessantly present and busy about the Christmas
party.

To this party all the young people of Chedbury came, together with
out-of-town friends the children had made at their various schools, and
such business connections as Baynes and Sandra felt were inevitable.

Whether old Thomas Seaton could get here tonight was questionable, if
the snow held under this sun. He had grown very shaky in his seventy-
seventh year. Mrs, Seaton was as hard as a nut. The fragility that had once
been her charm had become sinewy and sinister,

Edward pondered the determination of women to outlast men. Would
his own Margaret one day linger long after he was underground? To this
melancholy question he found no answer as he continued to dress, listening
meanwhile for the voice of Mark, his youngest, born to his astonishment
and Margaret’s laughter, three years ago. He would never forget his alarm
when Margaret came to him and told him she was pregnant, after so many
years.

“We should never have gone to Italy,” he had said solemnly.

“Why do you blame Italy?” Margaret had demanded.

“You know very well what I mean,” he had retorted.

For that year Sandy had been put into boarding school, and he and
Margaret had gone to Europe once more. In a manner of speaking, it
was a second honeymoon, although neither of them had put the idea into
words. He had rejoiced that again he had her to himself, her thoughts to
be directed to him alone as they had been in the days when they were

624

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

newly married. This had not quite come about. The cMIdrea : existed for
them both, and even at times when they were most intimately close, as they
had been, for example, that night in Venice, he saw a faraway look stealing
into her eyes, which meant that she was wondering about the children.
Once having given birth to a child, a woman seemed to be forever divided.
It had taken him a long time to leam this, and still longer to accept its
inevitability.

That night in Venice he remembered in absurdly idyllic circumstances
—that is, a moon had risen over St Mark’s and the water in the canal
upon which they were riding in a gondola, though actually filthy, was
changed into liquid gold. The Italian fellow who was rowing them began
to sing a soft shaking melody and his tenor voice, though untrained, had a
surprising quality of sweetness. Margaret sitting beside him on the narrow
benchlike seat looked like a girl. She had put chiffon or something over her
head, and her face was absolutely beautiful. Edward had wanted to make
love to her immediately, and in an hour or two he had suggested that they
go back to the hotel. She had not wished to go, and this had irritated him.
Surely she understood his state of mind, and surely she might have re-
sponded to it. He earnestly longed to abandon himself to romantic love.
It was not often that he felt he could. That night, far from Chedbury,
with no business problems pressing and the children cared for, he had felt
entitled to what might be called relaxation. A man of more common clay
would have found it in various repulsive ways, but he had turned to his
wife.

“Oh, let’s enjoy the night as long as we can,” Margaret had said, re-
belliously.

“You don’t enjoy being with me, I suppose,” he had retorted. Of course
she knew very well what he was feeling.

“We may never see Venice again as long as we live.” This was her
reply. It was made to remind him of a quarrel they had had once in
Kansas. It had been her first journey westward, and her excitement, as
tonight, had made her more than usually beautiful. She had gazed at the
rising plains over which they were motoring. “It’s more lovely than the
sea,” she had murmured, “because it doesn’t change.” So beautiful had
she been that day, her cheeks sunburned red and her black hair flying, that
he had wanted love from her. She had yielded unwillingly, as he had found
out only long afterward, because she did not want to hurt him. Nor had
this wish to spare him been an unselfish one. She admitted, when he
pressed her, that she did not want to have the trouble of a quarrel. Upon
this they had quarreled indeed. He had not forgotten the tortuous admis-
sions he had wrung from her,

“You, who insisted that you would marry me only if we could be frank,”
he had reminded her again. “I am frank enough, but what about you?”

She had been cool and patient. “You make it impossible for me to be

THE LONG LOVE

625

frank/’' she had declared. I don’t feel just as yon do, and when
yon do, yon feeiit is my fault ! lie. to save myself trouble.” "

He^ had refused to acknowledge the possibility of truth In this nonseme,
but he knew there was truth in it, though only a wisp, and knew, too, that
she was aware of having said something telling. He had made, honest ef-
forts, ever : afterward, to examine her mood, before indulging his own.
- But she had held the Kansas afternoon against him, as he came to
know, because while she wanted to be free to enjoy the world through
which she passed, he had forced her, because she did not want to hurt him,
to center her attention on him. She had never quite forgiven him, nor in a
sense had he forgiven her, while he had learned to accept rationally the
difference between them, which was that when he was moved by extraordi-
nary experience or pleasure, his impulse was to find release and expression
in his love for her. She, he now knew, wanted at such times to he free of
him and of love, in order that she might lose herself —and perhaps, him.

For long this difference between them had wounded him deeply, hut
with the years he had come to believe that it was the difference not only
between himself and Margaret, but also between man and woman, and
therefore to be accepted.

That night in Venice, with the memory of Kansas alive in him, he had
controlled his desire, had sat only holding her hand lightly, had allowed
her to wander into dreams she did not share with him, until suddenly long
after midnight she had turned to him, her eyes dark.

“Now,” she had whispered, “now I am ready.”

The outcome of that rewarding night, he was firmly convinced, had
been his unexpected son, Mark.

What they would have done without him it was of course impossible
now to imagine. A child who upset all their accustomed ways, no less in-
convenient to the older children than to himself and Margaret, spoiled as
he had become in his irrepressible youth and gaiety, he was a darling
headache, as Sandy put it, wherever they took him. Edward adored him
privately above all his other children. Some day, he secretly believed,
Mark would be the joy of his old age and the mainstay of the business.
Baynes had no children and was not likely to have any. Tommy, although
now a gangling youth, still showed no interest in anything except football
and the curious moaning noises which passed for singing these days. But
Mark, even at three, was trying to learn to read. Further than this, Edward
tried not to be proud of the fact that, of all his children, only Mark looked
like him. So real was the resemblance that there were times when Edward
had the illusion that he was looking into his own childish face as he used
to remember it, somewhat older than Mark’s, in the mirror in his old
bedroom. His mother made no pretense that Mark was not her favorite
grandchild. ,

Edward was dressing very slowly, feeling no hurry this morning before
Christmas. During the holiday week he tried not to work, if possible, at his

626

AMERICAN ■ .TRIPTYCH

usual tasks* He had put on scarcely more than six pounds as he grew
older, but Dr. Wynne had warned him of a blood pressure some ten years
too old for him. Nothing dangerous, but still it was a barometer. Now he
heard a tap on his door.

“Come in,” he called, knowing that light metallic sound. Margaret came
in, dressed in a new crimson wool dress which struck his eye at once.

“Not too red, is it?” he asked cautiously.

“Is it?” she demanded.

“The skirt’s short,” he suggested.

“Oh, you!” she said with affectionate humor. “You wouldn’t be satisfied
unless I went around in some sort of purdah. For heaven’s sake, Ned,
be your age!”

“I wish you’d be yours,” he retorted with good spirit.

Whether it was her slightly graying hair; which made her skin look as
fresh as ever, or whether it was the undying blue of her eyes, he did not
know, but she had grown more handsome with years. What had been an-
gular and impetuous in her young face had grown smooth and tempered.
She had not quite fulfilled his secret longing for moments of high romance,
but he did not blame her entirely for that, knowing that to the ordinary
eye he was not wholly a romantic figure. His face, as he now looked at it
in the mirror while he knotted his brown satin tie, was long and dark. His
hair was growing heavily gray and his rather large mouth had taken on a
dry and saturnine look, which he did not understand, for he was at heart
a shy and still too sensitive man. The last thing Jane Hobbs had said to him
one day, now five years ago, when she made ready to walk out of the
office for the last time, was, “Now that Fm to be gone for at least a month,
do for mercy’s sake watch yourself, Ed, and don’t give money to any-
buddy you don’t know.”

Poor Jane— none of them had thought she would not be back. She had
gone to the hospital for some female operation into whose details he did
not inquire, the sort of thing he understood that the wombs of old virgins
were liable to develop, and she had not survived the operation that was
to make her life better. Perhaps it was better anyway. Who knew? Joseph
Barclay with all his sermons had never been able to convince him that
there was any sort of real life after the grave. He would not speak this
doubt as long as his mother lived, for she had at best too short a time left
to her in which to hope to see her husband again. With each year since his
father’s death, the silence growing deeper as the very memory of his voice
was forgotten, his mother was able to remember only his virtues, those
good qualities that had appeared so scanty in life. Perhaps the physical
awkwardness, the small repulsive habits that his father had never tried to
overcome, had died with him, leaving his true image clear. Death had
performed a service.

“Well,” Margaret said restlessly. “I suppose you’ll be down to breakfast
when you’re ready.”

THE LONG LOVE

627

you going to kiss me' this morning?” he ■ demanded. '/

, She moved to him and their lips met with the ease of long habit She
had taken to wearing lipstick, to his private annoyance, but he had given
up protest.: She wore it very well, of course, just the slightest' tinge and
not the solid scarlet that Sandra plastered on her mouth, already somewhat
too coarse. But still it was enough so that he had to bother to wipe it off,
lest one of his children jeer at him.

''At it again, you two!” Sandy had cried the last time she was home
from school, when she saw the stain of red on his chin. Young people
these days were purposely ribald.

And yet, he thought, as Margaret’s lips met his, this kiss was better than
ever. Some of the old sting and novelty perhaps were gone, but the
present satisfaction was deeper than he could possibly have felt in his
youth. He had still not plumbed all her womanhood. She changed ail the
time, and he had to keep up with the change. Take, for example, her will-
fulness about working for these foreign peoples—what on earth did they
have to do with Chedbury? Except that he did not like the look of things
in the world at that! Even when they had been in Europe there was already
some sort of shadow creeping over Denmark and Holland. He didn’t see
it in Italy or in Germany. Everything there was buoyant and the people
were full of hope.

"Germany is about to rise to the height of her nationhood,” Heinrich
Mundt, the German publisher, had declared.

"What on earth are you thinking about?” Margaret now demanded.
"Not about me.”

"It comes of my not having to rush to the office,” he confessed.

"What’s the use of kissing me if you don’t keep your mind on it?” she
said and shook him a little and went away.

A rumble at the front door, a slam, and then a loud shouting voice
roaring through the house announced the arrival of Lewis Harrow. A mo-
ment later the fellow was bellowing up the stairs.

"Ain’t you up yet, Ed?”

Lewis affected these days a return to the speech of lower Chedbury,
declaring that it was the sort of English he had learned as a child and
anything later acquired was pretense. He had never married, and for all
these years had continued to live alone at The Eagle, except for long
journeys into various parts of the world, in no one knew what company.

Edward opened his door, "Just coming,” he said crisply and closed it
again. A hoarse growling, as of bears, mingled with shrieks, told him
that Mark had rushed out of the kitchen to find his beloved. Strange that
nowadays because of the child’s joy he should be slightly jealous again of
Lewis Harrow! Old roots yielded reluctantly.

He went downstairs wearing, as symbol of holiday, the red velvet jacket
that Margaret had given him last Christmas. Lewis Harrow, in shabby

628 .AMERICAN TRIPTYCH ,

tweeds, one elbow ragged, gazed at him as at an: apparition; ^My God,
how handsome yon are!” he cried and pretended rnde amazement.

Edward smiled. ‘‘Thank you,” he said with composure. “Have: you had
breakfast?”

He was pleased to see his small son,' wearing a blue sailor suit and his
breakfast bib, desert Lewis and come lying with outstretched arms. He
picked Mark up and carried him into the dining room and put him into
the highchair before he took his own seat.

‘T had breakfast before dawn,” Lewis shouted, following him into the
dining room.

“Foolish of you,” Edward remarked. “What have you come here so
early for— money?”

Their friendship now was past the possibility of breaking, although twice
Lewis had quarreled with him and had gone to other publishers and twice
Edward had let him go, knowing grimly that no man could bring him
the fortune that Lewis did yearly. Twice Lewis Harrow had come back,
complaining and angry. “You’re all a lot of thieves, you publishers,” he
had cried. “I’ve a good mind to start printing my own books.”

“Perhaps you had better,” Edward agreed, “then you’ll see where the
profits go. If you have a thousand dollars left Fll be surprised.”

“Shut up and draw a contract for the best book I’ve written yet,” Lewis
had ordered. “’Member that mulatto fellow I told you about last year?
I’ve written a book about him.”

“People don’t want to read about mulattoes,” Edward had complained.

People had, however, read Pedro and the Public, It had not been one of
Harrow’s big books. The critics had been narrow-minded, but plenty of
people had read it with joy. It was Harrow’s strength that people read him
whatever the critics said.

“I don’t want any of your filthy money,” Lewis now retorted and then
corrected himself. “My filthy money, rather. Of course your Httle shop
would go out of business if it weren’t for me.”

“I did very well when you were fooling around with city men,” Ed-
ward replied mildly, and fed with appetite to scrambled eggs and bacon.

Lewis stared at him. “My God, look at him eat! It’s these rails of men
who lay away the grub.”

“What did you come for?” Edward asked. “I know you don’t climb
down Granite on a snowy morning just to watch me eat.”

Lifting a forkful of egg at this moment, Edward observed a strange suf-
fused look upon Harrow’s face. It had never been a handsome face, and
rugged and unaffected, it had changed little with years. Now it was blush-
ing red.

“I came to find out what time Mary’s train arrives,” Lewis said.

“Why should you bother to meet Mary’s train?” Edward inquired.
Shades of old jealousy made him look away from Harrow.

“Bacon,” Mark said succinctly.

THE LONG . LOVE

629

: Edwaid put a rasher on the child’s plate.

“Maybe I want to talk about a Christmas present for yoo/^, Lewis said.'

“Queer you get so red o¥er a Christmas present for me,” Edward
retorted.,

■“More bacon,” , Mark said.

: “Don’t eat so fast,” Edward' told his son. “This is' the last piece.”

“Ain’t you going to tell me the train?” Lewis inquired.

“What train?” Margaret asked coming at this moment into the room
to find Mark. “Edward, he’s already eaten his breakfast and had quantities
of bacon.”

“I told him this was the last piece,” Edward replied.

“Mary’s train,” Lewis reminded them.

“It gets in just before noon-eleven fifty, isn’t it, Ned?” In innocence
Margaret spoke.

“Yes,” Edward said unwillingly.

“Why didn’t you say so?” Lewis shouted. He rose and lumbered from
the room, pulling a fur cap out of his pocket as he went.

Margaret sat down at the table and poured herself a cup of coffee.
Then deliberately she lit a cigarette, her eyes, as Edward knew, daring
him to object. Weil, he wasn’t going to object. Whatever she did, she could
do. She knew that he deplored the habit that women were taking up of
smoking cigarettes, but so long as she did it only in her own home, he
would not say anything.

“Has it occurred to you that Harrow is behaving a little foolishly about
Mary?” he inquired.

The comers of her mouth quivered. “Has it occurred to you that you
are growing rather handsome in your old age?”

Edward was embarrassed rather than diverted. “I am scarcely in my
old age,” he returned. He continued with his coffee which he was trying to
learn to drink without cream, because of a slight though increasing tend-
ency to nervous indigestion. With some effort of will he did not look at
Margaret, because he knew she was looking at him and daring him to
look at her. Suddenly he yielded and their eyes met, hers amused and his
shy.

“What makes you say things that make me blush?” he complained. He
could scarcely keep from laughter, and he was too honest to deny, at
least to himself, that it was pleasant to have one’s wife, after years of
marriage, mention his increasing good looks.

“You’re wearing better than I am,” Margaret said. “You looked old
for your age when you were young and now you look young for your age.
It’s monstrously unfair that a wrinkle shows up so on a woman.”

“You haven’t a wrinkle,” he declared loyally. She did have a few, very
fine ones, about her eyes, and one, rather deep, between her brows, be-
cause she did not want to wear glasses.

“Now about Lewis,” she went on. “Yes, I think he is a little silly about

630

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

Mary and, yes, it does worry me, for while I know she won’^t fall in love
with a boy of her own age, it doesn’t stand to reason that Lewis is the only
man possible for her. He wants to worship her and she loves to be woi”
shiped. There’s the danger.”

He ignored what he believed was an edge of malice In her words. Mar-
garet was behaving well to Mary now as the child grew up. The adolescence
that he had dreaded had not been what he had feared. Mary did not con-
ceal the fact that she loved him better than she did her mother, but on the
other hand both Tommy and Sandy loved Margaret better. Things evened
up in a family, he supposed. Young Mark had learned early to be equal
in his demands upon both parents. At any rate, Margaret accepted Mary’s
partiality for her father.

“I know you don’t like me to say this, Ned, but you have spoiled Mary,
you know. You’ve done a little worshiping yourself.”

“Nonsense!” He put down his coffee cup.

“Not nonsense, and I don’t mind. I wouldn’t like worship, for myself.”

“Did you once tell Harrow that?”

There was no more than the old shadow of jealousy now. He enjoyed
his security as a husband.

“I laughed! There’s nothing kills worship so thorou^y as laughter. He
was furious with me.”

“Can’t you tell Mary that?” His eyes upon her were humorous but he
was glad he had not known this ten years ago.

“Oh, she’s at the serious age. Love with a capital L!” She lifted Mark
from his chair, wiped his mouth, and waved her hands at him. “Shoo with
you, young man! Go outside and play. Tell Hattie to put on your snow suit
and your galoshes.”

Left alone with her in the warm and pleasant dining room he felt
strangely sentimental. He wanted to convey this to her, and while he was
choosing his words, she said, “The real danger is, of course, that Lew has
reached the age where he worships youth.” A mild cynicism gleamed in
her eyes that were still sea blue. “Queer how young men worship old
women and old men the girls!”

He disliked hearing this platitude from her lips. Putting down his
empty cup he wiped his short mustache carefully. “I was just thinking how
much more I love you now than even I did when we were young.” Words
of love he usually spoke in the night, under the protection of darkness,
and he was pleased that here in the bright snow-lit sunshine they did not
sound absurd.

“Do you really, Ned?” She leaned on her elbows on the table and in-
quired this of him with a charming intensity.

The canary in the big bay window, inspired by the musical quality in
her voice, burst into sudden song. They listened, gazing at each other with
such communication that his answer scarcely seemed necessary. He rose
from his chair, impelled to take her in his arms, and she, divining his ne-

THE LONG LOVE

631

cessitys rose too aEd met' tiiEa Ie long CEibrace, whlcli''Was tiic more passioE-
ate becaEse eacIi expected a door to opeE'EpOE them. For ■ once Eone did,
aEd at iast he drew away 'and looked^ at her. “I wish I coold tell you all that
I feel, I wish I kaew how to put it hsto words. There- are still times----doE’t
laugh— when I really -want to write poetry.” ■

: ‘T wouldn’t dream of laughing,” she said gently. think ifs dear of you
and' wonderful— something . not to be expected by a woman after she’s
twenty. I am blessed.”

“Sure?” He wanted to penetrate deeply into her.'- Did he satisfy, her
every need at. last?'None of the surf ace mattered if he could be'sure''that
in her fundamental self she was content with him. But he dared' not make
further demand. . Some profound modesty .in ■ him inquired , even at this
moment ' why he should imagine that she ■could find a world .within the
limitations - of his being. His conception of love’s function now was that of
a guarding 'if overwhelming tenderness, not so . much demanding as^ provid-
ing.: Did what he provided, then, complete her dreams?

“Fm sure,” she: said. heartily.

' At this moment the into came. Tommy . strolled in for late break-
fast It did not occur to him that he could be 'unwelcome an3fwhere ■ and
he entered with all the brightness of unimpeded youth. The only real regret
that Edward felt concerning his son was that he had named. , him after old
Thomas Seaton and therefore after Tom. These two had not hidden their'
peculiar afiection for Tommy, and this had provided an escape thereby for
Tommy from the somewhat austere attitude of Edward as a father. Tom
Seaton had weathered into an elder bachelor who still continued to live
with his parents. Long tours around the world, immersions in India and
South Africa, and more recently a sudden interest in Italian music had
given Tom Seaton an excuse for living. Edward considered him a bad in-
fluence on all the young men in Chedbury and especially upon Tommy,
who was inclined, as his school career developed, to put on the airs of a
man of the world, a world about which he really knew nothing except
at second hand through his uncle.

Thus Edward saw his fresh-faced young son, who had recently grown
so tall that he looked as though he walked upon stilts, enter the dining
room with an air that was all too cheerful.

“Happy returns, you two,” he said negligently. “Many more of ’em, et
cetera.”

Margaret, with pleasant composure, sat down at the table to pour cofiee
for her son. Edward continued to stand as he lit his pipe.

“Anything I can do for the party tonight?” he inquired.

“Nothing, dear,” Margaret replied. It would have been impossible for
anyone to have believed that a moment ago she had been a young and
flushed woman in her husband’s arms. She was now the matron, the
mother of a grown son. Edward, looking at her from under his eyelids,
felt the private excitement of a clandestine love affair. Nobody knew this

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

632

woman except himself. Especially did young Tommy know nothing about
her. It occurred to him also that they had really settled nothing about
Harrow going to meet Mary. He did not want to speak of it before Tommy
who had all the surface cynicism of youth about love. He pulled out the
gold watch that had Mark Haslatfs name on it. ‘T shall go to meet Mary/^
he announced.

“Do, dear,” Margaret said smoothly. ‘T was thinking of going myself
but if you’re going, 111 meet Sandra. She gets in an hour later. I do wish
the girls could synchronize.”

“Mary always manages to come alone, for reasons she alone, alone can
tell!” Tommy sang in a falsetto.

Both parents looked at him with stem eyes but his smooth pink face
was innocent. Edward left the room abruptly. He heartily disliked the
constant flippancy of his children’s generation but it was incurable. Restrain
it anywhere and it burst out somewhere else. He put on his hat and coat
with a preoccupied gravity and searched for his cane. It was not to be
found. He pressed a button and a new maid, whose name he could not
remember, came from the kitchen.

“Where’s my cane?” he demanded.

“I’ll ask Master Tommy,” she said at once.

He waited until she returned. “He says he was using it yestiddy,” she
murmured.

He waited again until she had returned with the cane, grunted when
she handed it to him and went out the door. Surely Tommy was old enough
to leave his father’s canes alone.

“m buy him a cane next year for a Christmas present,” Edward
growled to himself.

But it was impossible on this morning to remain angry even with callous
youth. The sunshine sparkled on the snow in the most obvious Christmas
fashion. The merchants of Chedbury, having had a slightly better year than
they expected, had gone to the extravagance of a large Christmas tree in
the square and festooned lights around the lamp posts. He was pleased to
see a sleigh pulled by a horse coming stolidly down the road between the
passing automobiles, and then was taken aback by seeing that it was
driven by Tom Seaton. There were even sleigh bells around the horse’s
neck and Tom had found somewhere in the Seaton attic a tall white
stovepipe hat. People were laughing at him, moved by Christmas tolerance.

“Tommy up yet?” Tom shouted at Edward, waving a scarlet whip as he
passed.

Edward nodded and went on. Though it was a holiday and he had no
intention of going to his office he could not forbear passing that way, since
he was still early for the train, and then having arrived at the door he
went in. He had during the recent years taken over the entire building
for his printing shop and his book business. Although he had hot allowed
the books to absorb the shop, he would not print advertisements of cos-

THE LONG LOVE

633 '

meticSs Of whicli he disapproved, but he still printed private cards, wedding
and funeral announcements, and the programs for the Sunday services.
Occasionally he quarreled with the minister’s wording, . for Joseph Bar-
clay had grown more rather than less extreme m his middle age, and felt
that the world was. becoming so comfortable that people had to be scared
to God; More than once .Edward had returned, the sacred copy with a.
irm note that unless it were modified to some sort of' dignity, he would
not print it. Twice Barclay had refused compromise and ■ twice there had
been no printed programs in the church for that week.

The offices were decorated in the best of taste. Aided by Margaret,
Edward had contrived just the right atmosphere in his own private office,
enlarged by throwing together what had once been his father’s office and
Mather’s. He had paneled the room in oak, and a portrait of his father
hung opposite the door and over his own desk. The desk was solid but not
large. His infrequent visits to New York offices had confirmed in him a
dislike for large light-colored circular desks, confronting anyone who came
in. The man behind such a desk designed himself to terrify and for this
Edward suspected him of inner weakness.

The shop was of course idle today. It was still an open shop. Edward’s
blood pressure was points higher than it might have been had he not
faced grimly across his desk, some half dozen times, a group of men who
came to insist that he operate a closed shop. John Carosi brought them,
as he well knew, and time and again he had been on the point of firing
the fellow except that in all fairness he had been compelled to promote
him for excellence of work until now Carosi was his head foreman. The
man was a convinced labor man, and yet so just and truthful that he
allowed Edward to argue against unions. And Edward, in decency, was
compelled to hear Carosi in reply.

Against Baynes, too, and as heartily, Edward had argued. As Harrow’s
success had brought the modest spate of novelists to Haslatt Brothers,
Baynes, abetted by Sandra, had declared that the offices ought to be moved
to New York, leaving only the shop in Chedbury. Edward would not
hear of it. Offices in the city and workrooms in Chedbury would have
meant, he believed, nothing but confusion.

“You want to keep your hand on everything,’^ Baynes had accused
with the irritability that had become natural to him these days.

“I do,” Edward agreed. “I’ve told John he can’t even hire a new man
without my meeting him and having a talk, and he can’t fire anybody unless
I see the man myself and know what’s gone wrong. It isn’t just that I want
everything in my own hands, either. I believe that people are reasonable
if I take the trouble to explain things to them. I don’t want labor and
management against each other in our business.”

Secretly he wondered whether the deviousness of Sandra had imagined
Baynes the real head if the offices were in New York, Edward remaining
merely the boss of the printing end. Once he would have spoken his doubt

634 :

AMERICAH' TRIPTYCH

to Margaret, but he .had learned as he grew older to withhold . judgment,
.eveii.'of' his .sister-in-law.. . ,

Edward regularly went to New York once a fortnight, though Baynes
had grown sufficiently steady, after Sandra’s escapade with Peter Pitt, to
be relied upon.

Three years before this year, now so near its end, the two families of
Haslatt and Seaton, as well as the firm of Haslatt Brothers, then at the
very height of its first real and permanent prosperity, had been shaken
to their combined depths by Sandra’s affair. It was all mixed up with busi»
ness, in the way that only Sandra could mix such incompatibies as love
and shop. More and more she had become responsible for publicity and
promotion, showing indeed real talent for these unpleasant but essential
aspects of publishing. Thus had she arranged for the arrival of Peter Pitt
in the United States, for his successful lecture tour, and for the sale of his
books, including The Singed Flower, as motion pictures.

Not even Edward himself had suspected her of anything more than
business acumen. Baynes, later, in the midst of real agony, gave a ghastly
grin as he confessed his misery.

‘Tt’s beyond me, Ed. She’s hem driving a hard bargain with Peter Pitt,
even while she’s been carrying on. Our percentage is higher than ever. I
don’t know whether to love her or despise her for it.”

That midnight now three years gone, when Baynes had rushed from
New York to burst into the house, could not be forgotten. Fortunately
Edward had not yet gone to bed. As he grew older he needed less sleep,
while Margaret needed more, and he had been sitting in the library, bis
feet to the fire, reading one of the pile of manuscripts with which he never
finished. The house was silent, the family asleep. From the distance of a
fantastic novel about mountain climbing he had heard a cry and had
looked up to see Baynes at the door, as gaunt as a ghost.

Even so Baynes had made a pretense of nonchalance. “There you are,
Ed— I was hoping you hadn’t gone to bed. Got a cigarette on you? I’ve
consumed all mine.”

Cigarette between his trembling lips, Baynes had dropped into a chair
and had said in a squeaky voice, “Sandra’s left me.”

The fantasy slid from Edward’s hands. “Where’s she gone?”

Baynes held out a note and Edward had read it, his nose in the air as
though he smelled something foul. “Dear Bub—” such was Sandra’s absurd
name for her husband. “Don’t hate me, will you! At least not permanently?
Pete and I are taking a trip— maybe only a little one. I just had to get some
sort of radical change. I don’t know why, either. Not your fault! Sandra.”

He handed the note again to Baynes. “There’s something queer in the
Seaton blood,” he had said solemnly.

“Have you— is it in Maggie, too?” Baynes had asked with clutching hope,

“No,” Edward had said firmly, “not at all.”

Baynes had shrugged his shoulders and Edward saw that he was trying

THE LONG , LOVE

635

not to weep and so he had gone on talking. “Yon had better go upstairs
to the east guest room and get to bed.” He was deeply moved by Ms
brother’s plight , and very angry with Sandra, and. so- his voice was dry.
“Have you eaten anything?”

: “Couldn’t,” Baynes muttered.

“Come with me,” Edward ordered, and docile as he had once been in his
boyhood, Baynes followed his older brother into the pantry. Edward
opened the icebox and took out a ham and some lettuce and a slice of
cheese and a roll of butter. He went to the 'bread box and fetched a loaf
and put the kettle on and measured coffee.

“I didn’t know you were such a cook,” Baynes said. His voice was
trembling.

“I get myself a snack sometimes when I’ve been reading late,” Edward
replied.

He sliced bread and made a sandwich for Baynes and one for himself,
and when the coffee was ready he poured out large cups full and found
cream and sugar. Baynes looked at the food as though it sickened him,
and then suddenly began to eat and drink and Edward saw the ordinary
comfort of hot food seeping from body to soul.

“Of course I saw them running around,” Baynes said after his second
cup of coffee. “I didn’t think anything of it-everybody does that sort of
thing now,”

“You doing it, too?” Edward inquired.

“Only by way of business.”

“Hasiatt Brothers doesn’t make any such requirements of you,” Edward
said.

“You don’t understand,” Baynes retorted with impatience. “You live
up here in this pure little town.”

“I don’t know anything about the purity of the town. All I care about
is my own home.”

Baynes had looked at him with strange eyes but Edward had not in-
quired into their meaning.

“More coffee?” he had asked.

“No. I’m going to sleep,” Baynes said heavily.

The brothers had separated without more talk.

Sandra had stayed away for nearly four months. She had gone to Eng-
land and she wrote letters to them ail with the most frightful effrontery,
exactly as though she were merely visiting the land of her forefathers.
She had the further impudence to discover and recommend to Edward a
man who she believed could write novels, given sufficient encouragement.
Baynes told no one that his wife had left Mm, and Edward told no one
but Margaret. Whether she told the Seatons he did not know. The pretense
was kept up in the family that Sandra was merely vacationing. Even Baynes
as the weeks went on persuaded Mmself to the pretense and mentioned

■636

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

to Edward one day in the oflSice, as though he were only mentioning it; that
Sandra was returning on the eleventh of My.

Edward, beginning that year to struggle with increasing taxes, had not
looked up from his accounts. “She’s coming back, is she?”

“She’s had her fling,” Baynes said.

The affair had dried and hardened him. Ebullience had left him, perhaps'
forever, and his native New England toughness emerged to take its place.
Baynes was no longer young,

“You want her back?” Edward inquired.

“She’s still my wife,” Baynes replied.

“You’re being very decent.”

“No—only doing what I want”

So Sandra had come back, and Mrs. Seaton gave her a little dinner
party to which Edward found himself too busy to go, but at which, he
heard from Margaret, the talk had been all of England. “Mother kept say*
ing, ‘Dear old England,’ every five minutes,” Margaret said and wrinkled
her nose.

“Does your mother know?” Edward had demanded. He had got out of
bed and gone to Margaret’s room when he heard her come in and was
lying in her bed when she opened the door.

“Of course Mother knows and so does Dad and so does Tom, but no-
body is going to say anything outside, now that Sandra’s home again.”

“Are you going to say anything to Sandra?” he inquired.

She gave him a quick look, while she unfastened her necklace. “Probably
Sandra will tell me everything.”

So Sandra had done one day when the two sisters were sitting on the
beach alone, the children in the water and the men fishing. Edward
had bought a house on the seashore in order that he might not have
to decide each year where the family would go for their summers.

There was nothing much to the story, as Margaret told it to him that
night. He had allowed himself to get too heavily sunburned and it was
difficult to fix his attention on the somewhat dull story of Sandra and Pete,
bicycling about England, and apparently doing very little. In the end Sandra
had been bored. Nothing, she declared to Margaret, was more boring
than trying to live with a writer. Pete, she felt sure, was continually plan-
ning to put everything she said and did into some future book. It was a
relief to get back to her good old Baynes.

“She’ll probably go ofl again— with a banker or something,” Edward had
said, trying to find a safe place upon which to rest his sore frame.

“I doubt it,” Margaret said. “Sandra isn’t really a passionate woman.
That end of it bored her no end with Pete.”

Edward was startled into forgetting his pains. “Why in God’s name then
did she—”

“Don’t swear, Ned— she just wanted to make sure that there wasn’t any

THE LONG LOVE

637 '

more to it thaa she' Md with Baynes. Sandra’s always been like that-
wanting to be sure that she was getting all there was.”

What indecency!” he had cried.

“Isn’t it!” Margaret had agreed.

'He had not quite liked her placidity, in which he could not discern any
of his own disapproval, but he had not pursued the subject further. He had
remained cool to Sandra for some time, indeed to some degree ever since,
but she seemed not to notice it. The Seaton family held its head as bi^i
as ever in Chedbury, and Tom if anything admired his younger sister more
than before.

What had gone on between the mother and the daughters after Sandra
came home Margaret told Edward only partially, in unwilling fragments.

“Mother told Sandra how foolish Aunt Dorothea looked when she was
separated from Uncle Harold. A woman alone is so silly. I mean— nobody
knows what to do with her.” At this moment Margaret had laughed. “In-
cidentally, Mother was rather nice about you, Ned! She said you had made
a really sound and respectable business and Sandra would have been stupid
to cut herself ojff from it— especially for somebody with such a name as
Peter Pitt!”

“Thanks,” Edward had said with some reserve.

Mrs. Seaton had prevailed and the old New England blood in Baynes
had resumed its control. Sandra was thinner than ever and with humor
renewed and toughened.

In his own heart Edward asked himself, as he sat in the privacy of his
empty offices, how it was that Margaret had grown so well content with
him. He believed that she was content. Ail the impetuous restlessness of
her girlhood had left her and she had bloomed into a quiet half-indolent
calm, her dark hair graying softly about cheeks still pink. He had never
fathomed her altogether, and now he had no wish to do so. If she enjoyed
the unfailing stability of his love then he was fortunate.

The sunlight of the cold December shone as bright as polished steel
upon the floor and he remembered with a start that he was to meet Mary’s
train. He rose and went into the shop to see that all was well. No one was
here, either— or so he thought, the machines standing in silence, seeming
to sleep in their unaccustomed stillness. Then at the end of the long room
he saw John Carosi, in his good clothes, bending over a press, a small oil
can in his hand.

“Hello, John,” he called.

“Hello,” Carosi replied. He had never called his employer sk.

“You can’t keep away from here, either,” Edward said smiling.

“I remembered there was something that didn’t work right in this here
press,” Carosi replied, not acknowledging the smile.

“Well, merry Christmas— I’ve got to meet the train. My older daughter is
coming.”

638

mBMCm TKIFTYCH

‘‘Mary?” iohn Carosi spoke her name while he continned to ind smal
holes mto which to thrust the pinpoint nozzle of the oil can.

“Yes,” Edward said. In Chedbury the first name was the only one, but
in his marriage he had absorbed from the Seaton family a sense of class
distinction. None of his children shared this, and Mary would have an-
swered joyously to John’s use of her name.

He left the pressroom and putting on his hat and coat again and grasping
his cane firmly against possibly slippery snow, he decided to walk to the
station. From here the distance was short and the exercise would do him
good. He mused as he trod firmly on the now hard-packed snow. He had a
genuine liking for Garosi. What he disliked in the man was no individual
attribute, perhaps, and yet on the other hand it might be just that. Carosi
limited his world to his labor union. The small group of working men,
dominated by a fiery boss, who was in turn at the command of a central
human machine, was the universe within which John Carosi lived. All the
multiple affairs of mankind, hunger in Asia, a possible war looming in Eu-
rope, the mounting cost of living here at home— all these he saw simply
from the point of advantage or disadvantage for his union. Edward had
had an argument with him one day on the question of whether the increas-
ing cost of printing, which was nothing but the union pressing for higher
wages, might not some day stifle the book business, even as, Baynes had
declared, the unions in the city had hamstrung the theater and at the very
moment when it had to meet the frightful competition of motion pictures.

“Our welfare can’t be independent of union labor,” he had urged, “but
you in turn depend upon the general welfare.”

“Fve had enough of that,” Carosi had replied with obstinate tranquillity.
“We’re lookin’ after ourselves first, down at the union.”

It had been a secret mitigation of the alarming depression still lingering
in its aftereffects, that the hordes of the unemployed had thoroughly
weakened all labor unions. Yet this slight good could scarcely compen-
sate for the repercussions of the American depression on Europe.

He pondered this gloomily as he trod the sparkling snow this Christ-
mas Eve, absently touching his hat to acquaintances he passed. Carosi’s
insistence upon the group advantage was more than the symbol of the
danger of control of business by labor unions. He, Edward told himself,
was entirely willing to grant that owners had been operating for years
entirely within their own world, too, but he trusted owners more than labor
unions if for no other reason than that owners were on the whole better
educated. He was more afraid of ignorance combined with power than
of any other element in the world of man, and the more frightened because
he saw, though at a distance, labor unions bringing to power a very ignorant
fellow in Germany. No man, and no group of men, could live for self
alone and be safe or make the world safe for others. Human life was a
matter of proportion and balance, which he feared were both to be lost in
the approaching future. Even Sandra, careless of the welfare of mankind,

THE LONG XOVE

639

hac! seen from the vantage of ' England some sort of sinister shadow rising
in Germany,

' From such dark thoughts he was diverted by the whistle of the train
lying into the station while he was still two blocks away, and making haste
he arrived as the train was pulling out- and in time to see his beloved
daughter buried in the depths of the rough fur coat which Lewis Harrow
began to wear after Thanksgiving and did not take off until just before
Easter.

The train Mary had chosen was a slow one, and there were few people
on the platform. For this Edward was thankful as he hastened forward. He
did not care for the talkative tongues of Chedbury, after this spectacle. He
was further dismayed when his presence did not immediately separate Lew
from his daughter. Instead the fellow gave Mary an instant longer in Ms
arms and then she sprang forth laughing, her dimples rampant.

‘^Dad, darling!” she cried in the fresh voice he was never sure was spom
taneous or cultivated. Whichever it was, his heart melted at its music and
he allowed Mary to kiss his cheek. She was the center of his heart and he
considered her more beautiful even than Margaret had been at her age.
This might be, however, merely that he felt in her some quality of his own
and himself, an understanding of her that was natural, whereas he had
been compelled to achieve such understanding of Margaret through the
force of love. However he scolded Mary, and he intended to scold her now
as soon as he got her to himself, he felt the bond between them held,

*‘Well, now,” he said dryly. ‘'Come along home. Your mother wants
to see you before she has to leave to meet the next train. She wonders
that you and Sandy can’t synchronize.”

“Oh, we never do,” Mary exclaimed.

Her charming face was less regular than her mother’s, and its whole
look was softer, perhaps because her eyes were brown instead of that clear
sea blue. Her skin, too, was softly brunette, and her voice low rather than
clear. Examining anxiously tMs lovely young face among flying black curls,
under a small dark fur hat, Edward was alarmed to see how womanly it
was, how firm were the red lips, how set the rounded chin. How far had
Harrow gone into her untried heart? For surely she was as yet only a
child.

Tucking her hand under his arm and giving but the smallest of nods to
his most important author, Edward walked down the platform. His eyes
fell on Mary’s shoes. “There now— I wanted to walk home with you but
in those shoes we can’t. Of course there are your bags. I suppose you are
loaded up with luggage as usual. Where is it?”

“Bill took it,” Mary said in her composed little voice. “And Fd love to
walk.”

Bill was the porter. Inside the station he was waiting beside the assort-
ment a young woman brings home for the holidays.

640

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

‘‘You’!! catch your death,”' Edward grumbled. “Though I suppose Bill
can send the bags up and the sidewalks have been shoveled.”

“ril change as soon as I get home. Come along and don’t fuss, darling,”

He enjoyed being persuaded by his glowing young daughter, and they
set forth upon streets emptied by Chedbury’s early lunch hour.

“Oh, isn’t it going to be a perfect Christmas?” Mary’s feet dancing upon
the hard snow caused her to bob upon his arm.

“It’s begun,” he replied.

Her bright upward look reminded him that he was going to scold her
and that he had better begin before they reached home. He never allowed
himself to reproach his beloved child in Margaret’s presence.

“Except,” he said gravely, “I don’t like it when Lew embraces you pub-
licly like that. Maybe he’s so old that it doesn’t really matter.”

He cast a sidewise glance down at her to see how this notion of Lew’s
age would move her. She repudiated it at once.

“Lew isn’t old,” she said with complete calm. “Besides, I like my men
old.”

“Lew is one of your men, is he?”

“Always has been,” she said dreamily. “Ever since the first day he came
to our house to lunch—aiways has been, always will be-”

He felt sure she was daring him to go on, and reluctantly he took the
dare. “Your mother ought to tell you—” he began and paused.

“Tell me what?” she demanded, squeezing his arms. “Not the facts of
life-please don’t say that, Dad! I don’t want to laugh-not at you.”

He mustered his dignity. “What I was going to say is that young girls
always fall in love with men too old for them. It’s not real love,”

“Did Mother?” The question was sharp with a sort of jealousy which he
was quick to discern. Had this child also inherited his fatality?

“No, your mother is the exception to all rules about women,”

“Maybe she didn’t tell you.”

He paused again on this. “I think she would have told me. She’s entirely
honest.”

He looked down and met her dark eyes. There was something so quiz-
zical, so mature, in this glance, so quickly veiled that he was frightened.
The child was a woman!

He wanted to say no more but he loved her too much. “All I want to
say now is that I hope you know how dear you are to me. Lew is all very
well as an author— one of the great ones, of course— but as a man, he’s
not fit to tie your shoestrings.”

“How do you know, Dad?”

“Because I publish his books, that’s how I know! He gets his stuff some-
where and not out of other people’s books, either.”

Then from her exquisite lips there came these words, blasting his soul
and withering his spirit. “I don’t care for the old ideas, Dad— I mean about
purity and all that I want a man to be a man, that’s all.”

THE LONG . LOVE

■ **Maiy—’’ lie was holding her arm so tightly beneath his own that he was
lifting her. .

^‘Let me go, please, Dad.”

"I’m sorry-but what ! ■ want to say is-there’s a lot of men besides Lew-
better men.”

"Better?” .She repudiated the word.

He set his teeth and looked grimly ahead. "See here, Mary— before we
get home, let’s have this out. You aren’t going to marry Lewis Harrow.
My son-in-law? It makes me sick. I’ll quit publishing his books— damned if'
I won’t!”

He felt her hand tighten on his sleeve. "He hasn’t asked me, Dad.”

"If he dares to—”

"I will”

They had reached the door of home and before he could utter the groan
that welled up in him the door was flung open and Margaret ran down the
steps, clad in her furs, a sprig of holly on her lapel, to embrace her daugh-
ter. Mary was small in comparison and her cheek sank into the softness of
her mother’s breast.

"Dear child,” Margaret said lightly, "why, you’re looking very pretty!”

Mary patted her mother’s cheek. "You’re looking rather wonderful your-
self. Where’d you get that brooch?”

"Your father gave it to me last night for being married to him so long.
Now do wash quickly and eat your lunch, you two. It’s being kept for
you. Tommy was to have been here, but he’s staying to luncheon with
Mother and Father at the house. Now I must be ojff, or Sandy will feel
nobody’s bothered to meet her.”

A touch on his arm and she was gone. Edward mounted the steps of his
house, feeling as he always did, that when she was not there the house was
empty. Mary had run ahead through the haU and up the stairs, and he
heard her footsteps in the upper hall. She wanted to avoid him, for the first
time in her life, and no wonder, with that avowal upon her lips. What was
the use of having children when they broke one’s heart? He remembered
involuntarily the nights long ago when he had got up with her, wakened
by her tiny wail and he fumbling to get the bottle hot. He had taken over
the two-o’clock feedings because so often he worked late that it was not
worth while to wake Margaret. That image was with him still, the wisp of
agony he had held in his arms, the impatience, the despair of a human
creature deprived of food, the greedy satisfaction when the seeking mouth
found the milk, and then the rosebud child, replete and assured again, filled
with warm food. He had not got up with the other children, and perhaps it
had been those early-morning hours shared with his first child that had
made her so precious to him now. He was far more terrified of her budding
spirit today than even he had been of her fragile small body in those first
weeks and months of her life. Then it had been a matter of newborn flesh
and tender bones. Now it was something else, the birth of a quivering

642

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

spirit,: a heart, newborn, a self no longer dependent upon' him and seeking
its sustenance elsewhere. When he thought of Lewis Harrow as- the source
to which she turned, his gorge rose.

-He - went upstairs 'to his room to be alone for a few minutes before he
faced her again at lunch. He felt tired and he took off' his shoes, , and' though
it was midday, put on his leather slippers. Mark , was asleep doubtless at this
;hour. With much rebellion, Mark still had to submit to his mother’s firm
decision for daytime sleep. Since Tommy was away, it meant that today
inevitably Edward and -Mary must be alone for the meal. He felt dispirited
and unequal to the necessity. Was he inadequate, as a father? Pride rose
to deny it, -and-; he braced 'his sho^^ and after a second’s meditation
decided to' change his tie. He went to the mirror and adjusted the deep
crimson tie- that he chose, and then brushed his hair carefully." So habitual
did the tending of one’s body become as years passed, that with something
like shyness- he -peered' again at Ms long, rather sallow face, made more
brown by his graying hair. ' Whatever had been young and fresh in his eyes
was gone. They had grown piercing and his mouth was set in lines. Not a
face to make a young girl want to confide in him! And confidence could
never be forced. He could no more compel his child to open her lips now
to speak her heart than he could have forced her baby lips to receive food
when she was beyond the want of it. There it was— she was beyond the
want of Mm. Nothing that he could provide did she now need.

With this discovery he knew that it was to Lewis Harrow he must appeal
with the mustered force of Ms fatherhood. All that he could do in Ms
daughter’s presence was to be as nearly as he could the father whom she
would consider ideal. He went downstairs, determined upon courtesy and
even courtliness, the tender consideration of an elderly gentleman who
happened to be her father, yielding to her grace and beauty.

She was there waiting for him in the dining room, the table set for two.
Now that her fur coat was off she emerged as a small figure in scarlet
wool, her curly hair cut to her shoulders m the fashion set by some motion-
picture star whose name he could not remember. He disliked motion pic-
tures, although they were becoming an important part of the revenue of his
business. He had, however, gone to the filming of Harrow’s last book,
The Shrew. The leading part had been played by the star whose name he
could not remember. She had been blond, and he was relieved that Mary
could not look like her.

He pulled out her chair and smiled and was rewarded by the thanks he
saw in her eyes. Had it been no more he might have been hardened, but
he detected a mixture of timidity, her old childish yearning to be loved,
and by him. He was melted at once and he gave Mmself up to being the
ideal father that she wanted, as nearly as he could.

The day wore on to evening. He had tried to read some manuscripts,
aware of the increasing noise and merriment in Ms house, and had been

THE LONG LOVE

643

glad to give up all pretense when Margaret put her. head into the open
door, of , the library. , '

^‘Ned, do take Mark somewhere! He is everywhere he’s not wanted and
I have so much to attend to before the guests come.”

thought the caterer was supposed to do. it all,” he grumbled, in, spite
of gratitude for the interruption.

^*Oh, they always forget from year to year’ where the silver and glasS'
are.”

^^Tomrny home yet?”

^®No. I think Tom took him to Boston.”

*®Did he tell you?”

*^No, but Sandra called and said they might be late.”

don’t like Tommy going with Tom like that—he’s too young and Tom’s
too old.”

“Oh, well— it’s Christmas, and Tom hasn’t anybody special. Do hurry,
dear, I hear Mark yelling in the butler’s pantry.”

“Get somebody to put on his outdoor things, will you?”

“I’ll have him at the door.” She hurried away and he gathered his papers
together.

Half an hour later he was walking around the square with his son Mark
skipping beside him, very handsome in a woolly brown coat and gaiters and
a red knitted cap. The tree was alight and the festoons glittering. Mark
was asking questions about Santa Glaus and Edward answered them as
honestly as he was able, in view of the fact that Margaret had encouraged
Mark to believe in the saint’s myth.

“Have you seen Santa Claus?” Mark pressed.

“Well, in a way,” Edward countered.

“Bringing me things?”

He had never allowed anyone to use baby talk to this intelligent son,
and Mark’s enunciation of words was pure and precocious.

“Well, bringing things, certainly,”

“Which chimney will he come down tonight?”

“Fm not sure.”

He diverted the conversation from mythology, which he had never ap-
proved on the grounds that it was foolish to build up a faith which had
later only to be destroyed, and called Mark’s attention to the electric lights
on the tree.

“When I was a little boy, we didn’t have any electric lights in Chedbury.”

“Where did they come from?”

“All the people paid money and put up poles and we got it in from
Boston.”

Mark was not interested in electricity and having pronounced the name
of Boston, Edward fell to musing about the city which he disliked and
admired. In the frightful aftermath of the depression, Boston had prac-
tically gone bankrupt. It had not been surprising that New York had been

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

in a like fixj , and less PMladelpMa,' Detroit, and GMcago

were aU financially nnsonnd at die same period. The swollen rolls of those
millions of persons on relief had been maintained at starvation level only
by the largesse, actually, of rich men, who had not been willing to lend
their money, however, for anything much above starvation. He himself,
as one of the leading businessmen of the Boston area, had been invited
to go with a committee to wait upon a Boston multimillionaire, who
declared that while he did not want to be responsible for people dying in
the streets, yet because he had worked for his money, he was sure that
others could do so, and therefore he had to have a guarantee that the
weekly dole would be a minimum.

Somehow, largely thanks to Harrow, Haslatt Brothers had continued
prosperous enough so that in Edward’s own house there had been little
sign of the shortages which afflicted even houses once well to do. He had
insisted that Margaret not serve champagne at their Christmas party last
year, when things had been at their worst because trade had fallen off with
Europe after American loans had ceased. This year things were better,
however, and he had not mentioned the champagne. It would be served
tonight, he supposed, in the great cut-glass punch bowl which the old Sea-
tons had given them ten years ago as an anniversary present. Still, he
didn’t like the looks of things. Huey Long, for instance, was setting him-
self up in a very peculiar fashion there in the South. It was too much like
what was going on in Germany with that fellow Hitler. He was beginning to
imagine that Chedbury was nearer both Louisiana and Germany than was
comfortable.

The discomfort of his thoughts turned his instincts toward the warm
shelter of his house.

"We’d better go home,” he said to Mark.

The child had been silent for a while, clinging to his father’s hand. His
Christmas exuberance was suddenly over.

Edward bent to his beloved son. "Are you cold?” he demanded. He
laid his lean cheek against Mark’s roimd and rosy one,

Mark whimpered. "It’s getting dark.”

Remembermg that the child had always been unaccountably afraid of
the night, Edward was reassured. "We’ll go home right away.”

"Can’t you see the dark?” Mark asked in a small voice.

"I was thinking of things.”

"What things, Daddy?”

"Faraway things—iike Germany.”

"What’s Germany?”

"A place.”

"Is it a good place?”

"Not very, I’m afraid— not just now. Come along, trot!”

Together they trotted down the street which had once been a road to the
country, and in a half hour or so the house loomed up a mass of light and

THE LONG LOVE

645

eheer. Sandy and Tommy liad last year devised a system of indirect light-
ing upon the snow-covered trees which was far more effective than the
usual string of small electric bulbs. Tonight Sandy had turned the lights on
early, being an extravagant miss. He had not yet seen her, for she had- left
her, Christmas shopping to do in Chedbury, her jSnishing school being in a
remote spot on the Hudson, and she had used all her available afternoons
for theater matinees, to which she was addicted. '

, When he and Mark entered the house she was whirling in a solitary dance
of her own under the mistletoe in the hall, and not another soul was in
sight. She fell upon him ardently and with kisses when he came in, and
she knelt to hug Mark. She was still satisfyingiy a girl, with none of the
disturbing signs of womanhood. Her short hair, just escaping red, her hon-
estly freckled short nose, and gray-green eyes did not as yet spell beauty.

“I hope you’ve got my Christmas present,” he said by way of a mEd
preliminary joke.

did, you selfish thing,” she said laughing, “Fve got everybody’s pres-
ents and I lilce all I got and I hope people will give me the same things.
Dad, I bought Mother a tiny bottle of real perfume— rose! It cost so much
that Fm strapped.”

“How much do you need?” He put his hand to his pocket, accustomed to
this situation.

“Oh, Dad, not tonight— I can’t shop tomorrow anyway— but before I go
back to school. Mother said I was to take Mark and give him his supper
and put him straight to bed,”

“I’m going to stay up for the party,” Mark shouted, preparing tears,

“When you’re six,” Edward reminded.

“I’ll be going on six soon, next year maybe,” Mark retorted.

“Not this year,” Edward said with firmness. He did not want this child’s
fine body destroyed by unwisdom, and he hardened his heart to Mark’s
loud cries as his sister led him away.

The rooms were warm and beautiful, decked with holly as they were,
the chandeliers lighted, the satin sofas gleaming softly. The fires were laid
but not lit. It was a home of which any man could be proud. Piece by
piece he and Margaret had replaced the cheap things of their first years
and now there was not a table, not a chair, of which to be ashamed. He
liked only a few pictures on his wails, and when they had been in Italy they
had brought back four fine small paintings, not old masterpieces, but good
enough to draw the admiration of those who knew such art. The heavy
curtains were drawn over the windows and there was a smell of spice in the
air, a dash of rum with it. At this hour Margaret would be superintending
the eggnog, and he would not disturb her. At the far end of the library,
now that the rooms were thrown together, the Christmas tree shone tall
and green, decorated in silver. He liked a big tree, remembering the meager
trees of his own boyhood.

Then in some haste he pulled out the heavy gold watch his father had

646

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

left him. He must dress early, for he had to go and fetch his mother aod
Louise,. ■ ■

, The year after his father’s death it had become , evident that Ms mother
most not live alone, and he had not suggested that she live with him, divin-
ing, that Ms house would' not be the more peaceful for bringing his mother
and Margaret under one roof. Instead he had sought' out his sister, living
then with another teacher in a small apartment, and with difficulty he had
persuaded her to go home and live with their mother.

'He had been surprised at the stubbornness with which Louise had met
Ms idea. ‘Tt isn’t as if you had a real home of your own,” he had said.

She had looked at him with strange pale eyes. “That’s the very reason I
don’t want to go,” she had replied.

In the end she had gone, however, and he had tried to make it up to her
by putting some new comforts into the house, an oil burner, and a new
refrigerator instead of the old icebox. Louise had received the benefits In
silence. But silence was natural to her. He had no idea what she thought
about anything, though he acknowledged that in her tall narrow way she
had grown rather distinguished looking, and two years ago she had been
appointed assistant to the principal of the Chedbury school. He was sure
she was better at administration than at teaching.

He went upstairs and dressed carefully in the new evening things that he
had bought just before the depression, at Margaret’s insistence. He had
resisted her because, not having put on weight, he had thought his college
clothes would last him the rest of his life. But as usual, when she appealed
to his vanity for her own sake, he had yielded. She had chosen the material,
a violet black over wMch he had demurred because of the price.

“This suit you really may wear the rest of your life,” she had argued.

So he had yielded again, and then had been secretly glad to have done
so, because the garments were cut to fit his tall bony frame and with a
pleasure which he would have been ashamed to acknowledge, he enjoyed
the softness of the satin linings.

He looked into the pantry on Ms way out. Its old-fasMoned size was never
at better advantage than upon such an occasion, and presiding over the
caterer and his minions was Margaret, her hair curling about her face, her
cheeks scarlet with heat and excitement. She looked at him.

“Oh, Ned, you’re dressed already! Is it so late? What did you do to
Mark? He’s so excited. I must get dressed at once if you’re going for Louke
and Mother. Do taste tMs—it’s champagne cup. I made it because so many
people secretly don’t like eggnog and are ashamed to say so on Christmas,”
She poured half a glass of the mixture and he drank it, after the first taste,
with appreciation.

“Really good!” he exclaimed.

She flushed with his praise, and he would like to have kissed her but
could not, under the covertly staring eyes of the minions.

IHE LONG LOVE

647

“Don’t hurry,” he told her. “I shall take my time getting home. Mother’s

always too early.”

He went away, having backed his. car out of the garage with unusual
skiii, for he was not a good driver, far less skillful than any of his older
children, and they were apt to blame him for small scratches' and scrapes
on the fenders. The car was a good one and he was proud of it. He would
not for any reason have^ possessed the showy affair the Seatons had bought
some five years ago, which had a glass pane between themselves and poor
old Job Brummel, who, though their chauffeur, was still' and always would
be little more than a handyman. Thomas Seaton had hired lob the year
after Bill Core died of old age, because of his strangely English profile,
inherited from some faraway ancestor who came to America from London.
**Makes me feel as though I was sitting in a ’ackney coach,” Thomas said
with exaggerated cockneyism.

Edward drove carefully, mindful of ice freezing now on top of the snow,
and aware of unsteadiness under the wheels. He wondered if he should
have put on chains, which he did not know how to do in any case. In his
secret heart he wondered, too, if he ought not to hire a driver when the
children went back to school. He could not be sure whether in Ghedbury it
would be thought pretentious. Though again, he reflected, it might be con-
sidered only some of Margaret’s Seaton blood, but no, damn it, he would
not take refuge behind that. If he wanted a hired man to drive his car,
he would have him. But overhead could creep up, and the depression was
still far from over. He fell to ruminating again on the painful state of the
world, put awry by the war and not yet straight, while clouds of war
loomed again over human horizons.

Then resolutely he put away his haunting fears and reaching his mother’s
house he parked the car fairly well, and went in. His mother was dressed
and waiting in the living room, her coat and gloves laid together. Louise
was reading a magazine, that new digest, he noticed, which he had de-
clared was ruining the book trade. Who would buy a book for two dollars
and a half when he could get such a bulk of reading material for a quarter?
Louise was wearing a new dress, a dull blue taffeta that was rather
becoming. Her blond hair had not grayed and she put aside her glasses as
he came in.

*T’m early,” he announced. He bent to kiss his mother’s dried cheek.
Her middle-aged fleshiness had dropped away and she was withered and
old. Her scanty white hair was not curled, but she had put into the knot
on top of her head her one treasure, a jeweled comb that his father’s grand-
mother had once owned— how, he had never thought to inquire.

‘‘You look quite handsome, Mother,” he said, sitting down. *T never
saw the comb look better. It becomes your hair since you’ve grown white.”

*T’m going to give it to Margaret one of these days,” she declared. Her
voice was as piercing as ever and her eyes were undimmed.

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

' He caught a creeping hostile look on his sister’s face 'but she did not
speak. ‘'^You must give it to Louise,” he said.

^ ^No, for she isn’t' going to get married, so far as l ean see,” Ms mother
; complained. want Mary' should have it, really, but I suppose it ought' to:
go to Margaret first, in order.”

: don’t see why,” he said. ^Margaret has her own things tO' inherit.”

^Maybe I will give it to Mary, then,” Ms mother went on, ^^Did I tell you
it came from Spain once?”

‘‘No, did it?” He was interested now. Spain, that country of angels and
devils, that past heaven and hotbed of present evil! Only last Sunday he
had seen a picture in the Sunday newspaper of the plump portentous little
man who was rising to power there. How could people worsMp such gods?
At least let them be beautiful.

“There’s a mystery about this comb,” Ms mother said with some reserve.
“Your great grandfather gave it to his wife honestly enough but his mother
had it from somebuddy— nobuddy knows who. Anyway, it’s said that’s how
the Hasiatts come by their dark skins.”

He was amused at this possibility in past ages and he laughed soundlessly.

“Oh, Mother,” Louise said with impatience. “Everybody is always talk-
ing about Spanish ancestors.”

“Well, we have the comb, haven’t we?” his mother’s voice was
triumphant.

“V^at if it’s only Portuguese?” Edward inquired with mischief.

His mother rose. “You two are just as contrary as ever you were. Let’s
go. If we’re early maybe I can help Margaret.”

He knew Margaret’s dismay at this possibility and he made haste to put
his mother off. “She’s got the caterers there tonight— everything’s ready, I
believe, but we might as well go.”

His mother and Louise both put on their day coats, and he made a
mental note that next Christmas he would placate Louise still further by a
fur evening cape, and then they were all in the car and he was driving his
careful way homeward. His mother, sitting beside him , clutched the arm
of the seat in a fashion disheartening to him, but he did not mention it to
her, aware that for one who had grown up with horses and buggies, a
motor car would always be a hazard.

Once in the house he ensconced Ms mother in a large armchair and
leaving Louise to her own devices he hastened upstairs to find Ms little son
and bid him good night.

Mark was in his bed, his arms imder his head, the covers drawn to his
neck and Ms face unusually thoughtful,

“I was waiting for you,” he said at the sight of his father.

“I thought you would be,” Edward replied and bent to kiss him.

That cheek, so soft, so fragrant under his lips, nearly broke his heart
with love. Lest he betray Ms extravagant tenderness he said in Ms driest
voice, “You’d better go to sleep before the noise begins.”

•THE LONG LOVE

649

like' CMstmas,’’ Mark said dreamily, '‘but I don’t like tbe' nlgM be»
fore, because here I must lie, alone in the dark, while people are alve and
laughing everywhere.”

' "You’re alive, too,” Edward said sharply.

"Not like in the day,” Mark said simply;

The child was really too precocious, Edward told himself. He must talk
with Margaret about it after the holidays were over. They must take care of
this son, this treasure.

"I shall be coming back to see you every now and then,” he^ said, "and
I wE! light the candles on the mantel, so that you will not be in the dark.”

He lit the candles one and the other, and turned to catch his son’s smile.
"Thank you, Daddy,” Mark said, and closed his eyes to sleep.

Christmas Eve proceeded according to a pattern long established and
well enjoyed. Chedbury, out of deference to one whom it recognized as a
leading citizen, though of a sort they did not wholly comprehend, had years
ago decided against any other event on the twenty-fourth of December.
Edward Haslatt’s party was paramount. It was a heterogeneous affair. To
its earlier hours came those citizens who, though entirely welcome to stay
out the evening, knew instinctively that eleven o’clock was the hour at
which they should appear before host and hostess to say good-by, to give
their polite thanks for a "nice time,” and to wish a merry Christmas.

The party remained somewhat staid and decorous, a family affair, for
those earlier hours. Only near midnight did its loose strands knit them-
selves into something homogeneous and close. Conversation was no longer
labored, and laughter rippled through the rooms. The band, which Edward
each year brought from Boston, put aside waltzes and fox trots and set up
the catching intoxicating rhythms that had taken such hold upon the youth
during the depression. Since there was neither hope nor freedom in the
world of reason, they found it in their bodies.

Edward did not like it. He was slightly fatigued by the task of being
host to people he had known all his life, to whom he was Ed Haslatt, the
son of old Mark, and yet from whom he was now separated because he
had built up a business that published books many of which Chedbury
could not read. Never quite sure of where Ed left off and Mr, Edward
Haslatt began, their old ease was gone, except as Edward himself deter-
minedly kept it. But this, too, was tiring, and as he grew older and his
business forced him to become aware of a world of which Chedbury could
know nothing, and yet of which it was nonetheless a part in these strange
times, he found himself increasingly solitary.

Now, the rooms half emptied, he sat down in an easy chair in a comer
of the library to take a few minutes’ rest. The champagne cup had gone
well The eggnog would please those who were left. He could see old
Thomas Seaton sipping his foaming glass with dreamy pleasure. The old
man had given himself up to the joys of the flesh. Everybody was worried

650 ,

AMERICAN ' TRIPTYCH.

about Mm and. Dr. Wynne warned him every time' he saw him. Even to-
night he was looking at Mm, while he sat beside Mis. Seaton. They were
talking ahont old. Thomas, and Mrs. Seaton assuredly was saying the same:
thing she. always said: “Thomas says he may as well die an enjoyable
death.' He says he doesn’t want to die' hungry 'and thirsty, and go. empty
and dry into eternity.”

The young people were forming themselves together into that new thing,
that rhumba, a savage performance. He saw Lewis Harrow go up to
Margaret and propose himself as her partner. Thank God she was shaking
her head, Harrow looked all too well in evening clothes. His dark hair had
not silvered properly. Instead it had stayed coal black, and grown white
only at the sides, as though it were dyed. Yet in justice he had to acknowl-
edge that Lew would not stoop to such folly as hair dyeing.

Now, as though having invited and been refused by his hostess excused
him for willfully doing what might make his host angry, Harrow went
straight to Mary. She had avoided all other invitations, flitting here and
there in her gown of cloudy white, making a pretense of seeing that her
grandmothers were tended. Now as Edward watched her he saw a pretty
tableau, too distant for him to hear the conversation. The cMld bent over
her Grandmother Haslatt with all her conscious grace, and he saw his
mother melt under the loving deference that Mary showed her, and that
he was none too sure was not entirely a knowing process of charm. His
mother was saying something. Then she took the high Spanish comb from
her hair and gave it to Mary. The child’s hair was short and how could she
wear it? Ah, she was kneeling, and he saw Ms mother with a sort of tender
triumph gather the dark curls together and catch them on top of Mary’s
head and hold them with the jeweled comb. Mary rose to her feet just as
Harrow came near and she looked up at him with that dewy shyness, which
again might be only a process of her conscious charm. Whatever it was,
what man could resist it? He did not believe that Harrow said a word. The
fellow simply held out his arms, and Mary went into them and then the
band, as if the performers saw and understood, began to quicken the subtle
rhythm, to sharpen its passionate accents, and Harrow and Mary were
dancing away as one, and all eyes were on them.

Edward hid his own eyes behind his hand. The fellow danced supremely
well, and he was wooing Mary with all the skills of the flesh, and she, at the
very age when in spite of her delicacies, it was the flesh she craved, could
not but respond. He had not the heart to blame her, remembering himself
and Margaret at that age. But they had not such freedom as this thing, this
rhumba, with all its license, could and did allow.

He rose, intolerably stung, and went toward the dancers. Margaret,
watching him, met him, and slipped her hand under his arm,

“Everything is going well, I think,” she said with calm.

“It seems so,” Edward replied.

“How do you like my gown?” she demanded.

THE LONO LOVE

651

He looked down at her. It was a violet velvet, very pale and soft
new, isn’t it?”

She laughed. “Oh, Ned, you never quite know, do you? Weil, yes, Jt is.
Do you think the color is a little old for me?”-

“If you mean do you look old in it, the answer is no. Certainly not.
Who’s that girl Tommy is dancing with?”

“Somebody he brought back from Boston with him, on the spur- of the
moment”'

“I don’t like her looks.”

“She’s very pretty.”

“Too obvious.”

The girl, wrapped in a sort of sheath of gold, was as thin as a stick and
her straight yellow hair floated in ribbons behind her violently moving head.

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know— Dinny something.”

“Queer times,” he commented.

With such camouflage did he conceal the approach to the one thing
about which he was thinking. Now he came to it. “Margaret, we’ve got to
do something about Harrow and Mary. I simply won’t have it. Why, she
might want to marry him!”

“I know, dear. But we can’t, you know, any more than I can do any-
thing about my father’s fourth cup of eggnog which I see him taking this
very minute,”

But she would try, nevertheless. Overcome by anxiety she left him
swiftly and crossed the floor to the long table in the dining room where old
Thomas, already shaky, was holding his cup toward a laughing woman
who was filling it.

Thus deserted, Edward felt the blood rise to his brain and intoxicated
with his own anger, he walked firmly among the dancers and approached
Lewis Harrow and touched him on the arm.

“Come with me a moment, please,” he said distinctly.

Harrow, surprised, came out of his trance. “Can’t business wait?” he
demanded.

“No,” Edward said. He met Mary’s hot eyes with a cold stare and with
Harrow beside him he led the way to his own small study which of all
the downstairs rooms had not been thrown open. The sudden quiet behind
the shut door only hardened his resolve. “You needn’t sit down, Harrow,”
he said with the same cold distinctiveness of enunciation. “I simply want
to say that you are to leave my daughter alone. She’s a child.”

Harrow blinked. He had been well aware of Edward’s anger at the sta-
tion this morning, but he had been determined to ignore it. He would ignore
it now. “She’s not quite a child,” he said mildly.

“In comparison to you she is,” Edward said. “I don’t forget all between
us that is good and useful to us both, but I’d throw it all away rather than
see her—”

652

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

**What?” Harrow asked with malicious ^ m

^*Commit her heart to you,®’ Edward said gravely.

Harrow flung himself into one of the leather armchairs, ** You’re so
damned serious,” he complained.

“About Mary I am,” Edward agreed.

Harrow gave him a strange look. He smoothed back the white wings
of his hair with his open palms, and lit a cigarette. “Very well, then, Fll be
serious. I consider it rather a privilege for a young girl to fall in love for
the first time with an older man— especially me.”

Edward gazed at him with actual hate. Underneath it his old jealousy
burned, transferred now to this young and tender creature who was his
daughter and yet somehow compound, too, of Margaret.

“And how do you feel toward her?” he asked in a thick voice. “When
you’ve made her— love you— then what will you do?”

Haixow looked away. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I really don’t
know.”

“It’s wicked of you,” Edward said.

Harrow glanced at him and away. “These things grow.”

At this moment the door was flung open. Mary of course he had been
expecting, but Mary angry and unreasonable. This was not she. Mary was
weeping and she seized his hand.

“Oh, Dad,” she gasped. “Oh, Dad—”

“What, dear?”

“Grandfather— he’s— he’s— Mother says you must come— oh quickly,
please, Dad!”

He had no time to decide. Margaret needed him. He left Mary, catch-
ing in his distraction one last glimpse of her. Harrow had risen and put
out his arms, and she had gone into them. He heard her crying. “Oh, Lew,
he’s dead— he’s dead— I can’t bear to see him—”

But he did not pause. Margaret needed him.

Beside the Christmas tree lay Thomas Seaton. He had gone to toast the
tree, making a joke of it as he had made a joke of everything in his life.

“Evergreen forever!” he had been declaiming, before the laughing
guests. “I who am about to depart— salute thee, the eternal—”

By some strange coincidence of life and death he had fallen at the very
moment he lifted the cup to his lips, and the blazing lights of the tree shone
down on him as his knees crumpled. Margaret had run to him, but Tom
had already caught him. Mrs. Seaton had turned away her head, and
Tommy had found Dr. Wynne, napping behind a tubbed palm tree.

Edward hurried to the gathering crowd and parted them with his hands.
Margaret sat with her father’s head in her lap. She was tearless, and her
face was ashen as she lifted it to her husband.

“Come, dear,” he said. “Tommy, take your mother’s place. Where’s
Sandy?”

“She ran upstairs-s-sir,” Tommy stammered. He looked sick and pale.

THE LONG LOVE. ' 653

‘^Nothing we can do,” the doctor was miimnring. '^*It came as I feared
It would.” .

“The way :he wanted it,” Mrs. Seaton said. “Margaret, take me away,
please.”

Between them they led the .quivering old lady upstairs, and into , the gray
and rose guest room. She was almost entirely calm, and the blow for which
she had prepared herself so long had fallen at last and yet she could not
quite bear it as she had imagined she could.

“I shall lie down for a bit. Leave me, please, Margaret. I must be alone.
Edward, you’ll see to everything. Tom’s not reliable enough.”

. “Of course,” he said. ,

“Mother, let me stay— ” Margaret began, but Mrs. Seaton would not
have it. With a sort of subdued wildness she shook her head. “I must be
quite alone— really, I must, just for a bit.”

So they left her on the bed under the rose satin quilt, her eyes closed
and dry, her lips trembling.

Outside the door Edward took his wife into his arms. “I thmk of you,^’
he muttered, “only of you.”

He put out of his mind the image of Mary alone with Harrow. Doubt-
less the fellow had told her what had passed. Never mind now— nothing
mattered but this straight silent woman in his arms, his beloved, his own.
She had buried her face in his shoulder and he thought she would weep
but she did not. She held him hard, her hands under his arms and clutching
his shoulders, for a long moment. Then she lifted her face and began to
cry. “It’s strange,” she sobbed. “Somehow I clung to Dad in my heart—
maybe ail daughters do.”

Did they? Then what about his own daughter? Who knew what was
happening in that small closed room behind the shut door? Old Thomas
had not really wanted Margaret to marry him, either, and she had been
as willful as Mary was today. Ah, Margaret was his first love, his only
love. He put the thought of his child away from him. No child should
come between them now. He pressed her head close upon his shoulder
and began his comfort. “You were always the best daughter in the world
to him. He loved you better than any of his children.”

“Do you think so, Ned? Really?” She was trying to control herself, tight-
ening her throat, stopping her tears. She looked up at him and he saw her
wet lashes and her eyes blue beneath them and his heart was wrenched
with the old painful love, infinitely increased by the years and all that had
been and had not been between them.

“I wish I could comfort you,” he said with tender wistfulness. “I wish
I knew how. I love you so terribly.”

He saw her face, so schooled by life, by wifehood and motherhood,
soften and quiver and break into a trembling smile, molten with sorrow*
“Oh, Ned— oh, Ned— I wish I had been a better wife to you, darling.”

“But you have been— you’ve been perfect.”

654

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“No, I haven’t I haven’t been half I wanted to be— that day' we were
first married.”

“Then I haven’t' known it” he said. With astonishment he considered
what she had just said, his arms still hard about her. Had she indeed been,
suffering some private remorse? But for what? He could not imagine.

Then holding' her thus, before they returned to the things that had to
be done, it came to him that even as he had reproached himself now and
again for allowing his worries and cares, even his success, to separate him
from her, so she too might have like causes for reproach. They still had a
great deal to learn about one another.

“We’ve only begun to be married,” he declared suddenly. “It’s taken
us all these years to get going— earning a living, raising children— now let’s
just be married, will you, sweetheart?”

The old name that he had not used for so long, scarcely since she had
been a mother to his children, was new again and infinitely exciting. She
lifted her lips and he kissed her, the most profound, the most passionate
kiss that they had ever shared. Ail that had been was only the approach
to what was yet to be. What was that she had said? That she had clung
secretly, as daughters do, to her father! Well, that was over. He had no
longer to compete with Thomas Seaton’s charm and humor and gaiety.
He had Margaret now to himself, forever. Reproaching himself in the
midst of sorrow, he pressed her head to his shoulder and she yielded. They
stole yet another moment to be alone together and the years slipped away.

Yet underneath the steadfast duty with which he supported his beloved,
he suffered an agony of uneasiness. What had taken place between Mary
and Lewis Harrow in his study when he was so suddenly called away? He
had left them alone together and what more natural than that Harrow had
undertaken to comfort his Mary? In the girl’s shaken state, weeping for
the grandfather she had loved, what more natural than that she would have
accepted such comfort?

Edward hastened downstairs, having put Margaret to bed with promises
of his swift return to her. But Harrow was gone, as were all the guests. His
children were behaving beautifully. Tom had taken his father’s body home,
and Harrow, Sandy explained, had gone with him to help him,

Edward paused a moment for this younger daughter, perceiving in her
manner a humility new and overeager.

“Were you afraid of Grandfather, dear?” he inquired, remembering that
Tommy had reported her flight.

Her freckles were submerged in sudden color. “I’m fearfully ashamed
—especially when I’m thinking of being a doctor.”

“It is hard the first time,” he agreed. A doctor? He was not ' sure women
should be doctors, and he forbore discussion of it now. In the distance he
saw Mary. “You two girls had better straighten things up,” he told Sandy.

“Yes, Dad,” she said obediently.

THE LONG LOVE

655 .

- His mother ' and' Lo™ were still there. In the' suddenly quiet honse ail
of them began now to straighten the rooms, putting the chairs In their
places, picking up the paper streamers and toy hats, the empty; cups and
glasses and restoring the house to decency again. Only the Christmas tree
had been left blazing and Edward, unable to bear its garishness, touched
the' button that put out the lights. Thus abruptly, too, had' the light of ' life
gone from the shining and vigorous old man.

His daughters were subdued and they moved from room to room and
when all was done they bade him good night quietly. He called Mary back.

■«MaryP^ ■ ■ ■

^^Yes, Father?”

**Wait a minute, please.”'

‘T was going up to Grandmother.”
think she’d rather be alone.”

^‘But I want to be with her.”

Their eyes met, their wills crossed and clashed and he yielded.

“Very well.”

‘‘Good night, Father.”

“Good night, my dear.”

She ran upstairs swiftly, her cloudy skirts held high, the Spanish comb
gleaming in her hair, and he sat down exhausted. Yet he must now take
his mother and sister home. They were waiting.

“I can drive, unless you think you need the car,” Louise suggested.

“I had better have the car tonight,” Edward said, considering,

“I never thought old Mr. Seaton would go this way,” his mother
mourned.

“It was a good way to go,” Edward replied. He shrank from his mother’s
interest in the dying and the dead,

“I suppose you will have to plan the funeral,” she went on,

“Joe Barclay will do that,” Edward said.

“Oughtn’t you go over to the house tonight?” she suggested.

“I suppose so,” Edward said unwillingly, “unless Margaret needs me.”

“We’d better go home since we’re no more use here.”

So saying his mother rose and a moment later they were riding through
the cold and snowy night. Lights shone from the windows of houses where
belated parents were still filling Christmas stockings and decorating trees
and the silence broke when the bells of the church began to ring softly
the notes of a Christmas hymn. Children half waking would know that
Christmas Day had come, would smile and sleep again. Only an old man
would never wake.

The solemnity of the ending of Thomas Seaton’s life filled Edward’s
mind. He had never loved his father-in-law, aware, while refusing to ac-
knowledge it, that there had been some secret rivalry between them.
Margaret had belonged to them both. She had clung to her father— that
was what she had said tonight— but how much? Perhaps the withdrawal of

656

AMERICAN TOIFTYCH

which he had been so often conscious was because the core of her heart
had clung to another, not him. It was not the common rivalry between
father and husband but between two different men, the one gay and care-
less, rich in living, humorous, articulate, his words flowing easily, and the
other-himself. He remembered absurdly, after these many years, that
Thomas Seaton had once wanted Margaret to marry Harold Ames, who
was now the president of a great bank in New York. Edward saw his pic-
ture sometimes in the Sunday newspapers, opening a campaign for the
Republican party, heading a drive for the Red Cross, giving a check to the
mayor for city relief. The handsome smooth face might have been Thomas
Seaton’s own, a quarter of a century younger. Margaret had not, so far
as he knew, ever seen Harold Ames again. But his memory perhaps had
survived in her love for her father and her father had forever conditioned
her heart. The old doubt that he, Edward Haslatt, could ever wholly pos-
sess her, added despair to his dejection.

“Here you are, Mother,” he said and drew up at the doorway of Ms
father’s house;

“Don’t get out,” she said, preparing the difficult descent.

“Of course I shall,” he retorted.

He got out and saw her to the door, unlocking it and turning on the
light in the hall before he stooped to kiss her good night. Louise had come
in and closed the door, as he found when he turned to go out. The house
had seemed strange since his father’s death, a house lived in only by
women, who in their unconscious fasMon had removed from it bit by bit
all his father’s ways and possessions.

“Good night, Louise,” he said, and opened the door.

To his surprise she followed him to the porch and closed the door on the
old woman toiling up the stairs.

“Ed, I don’t know as I ought to add trouble to this night,” Louise said.

He looked down at her pale still face, wrapped around by a knitted
woolen scarf that she called a fascinator.

“What do you mean?” he demanded.

She hesitated. “Maybe I oughtn’t to say.”

“For God’s sake, Louise,” he exclaimed, “why can you never speak
out?”

“You’ve no call to swear at me, Ed. I only want to do what’s right.”

Her trembling lips infuriated him. All the anger he never showed to
Margaret and Mary sprang out at this dull and pallid sister of his. “I hate
hemming and hawing. If you have something to say, then say it.”

“All right, and don’t blame me— but I saw Mary and that— that— ”

“Well?” His voice stabbed her.

“Lew Harrow was hugging her,”

“That doesn’t mean anything nowadays,” he mumbled.

“After you went upstairs,” she continued doggedly. “And I heard her
say, I will— I will, two times, like that.”

THE LONG LOVB

657 '

what?’’

**How could I know?”'

<*Just how did it happen that you heard anything at all?”

*‘'1 went— I went—”'

, Her voice faltered, her head dropped, -and she untied the woolen ends
about her neck. A monstrous idea occurred to him. She had gone to see
what Harrow was doing! ,

“Why did it interest you to know what Harrow was doing?”

His own injustice occurred to him with these words. Why did it interest
him to know the secrets of his sister?

“I didn’t think you’d want Mary-to— to— ”

“I have never known you to take so much interest in Mary.”

In the light of the circle of electric lights, which made the meager Christ-
mas decoration of the doorway, he saw his sister fling up her head in one
of her rare fits of anger. He knew these outbursts, coming perhaps once a
year after months of creeping silence, and he braced himself.

“You think you’re so wonderful, don’t you, Ed? You think you’re much
better than the rest of your family. Yes, you do. And that’s what Uncle
Henry thinks, too. You never go to see poor old Uncle Henry, though
now he’s in the county home.”

“What in heaven’s name has that old skinflint to do with what you were
talking about?”

It was true that he had paid no attention to this old relative who had
bullied his father in days when the family was poor. Louise could not
remember, nor could Baynes, those early years when he had heard his
parents worrying lest Henry might be offended and withdraw the pitiful
wages he paid his younger brother Mark.

“Because you think you’re so fine,” Louise raged. “You think Mary is
better than any of the other girls. Well, I taught her in school and I tell you
she isn’t. She’s run after Lew Harrow for years— simply years. She’s like
any of the other silly girls.”

“Stop!” He held his hands to keep from striking this foolish old maid
who was his sister.

“I won’t stop. I’ll tell you the truth if nobody else will. Do you think
a man like Lew Harrow could really care for a child, a schoolgirl like
Mary? Why, he’s famous, he’s had lots of women, I guess— anyway, he
could.”

Her voice broke and as always happened her anger could not sustain
itself. She began to cry and turning to the door she fumbled for the knob,
the fascinator falling over her face.

He understood suddenly what had made the rage and he was embar-
rassed, ashamed. They had never been close, he and this sister, and he did
not want to know her secrets. He would not tell her what he saw, that
she hated his Mary because she herself had, in her feeble way, felt the
strength of Harrow’s charm— even she! And in her poor way she had fallen

658

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

in love with him. He pitied her. Impatience changed in him to pity, but
shame was still stronger. He would be ashamed before Harrow, lest that
man, so acute in the knowledge of the human heart, might already know
what he had not known until this moment

“Let me open the door for you, Louise,” he said. His voice was husky.
In the space of a minute the curtain between them had been thrown back
and he saw her as she had been, a pale little girl hostile to boys and, it
seemed to him, including him somehow among boys. She had never learned
to come out of herself, and she had never let anyone come in to her heart
or mind until now. The monstrous fantasy of her imagination, in dreaming
that Harrow could think of her— but perhaps she had not so dreamed. Per-
haps it had been enough that she thought of him, that he filled her secret
heart, so long as he was not married. She had not minded, perhaps, that
he had loved other women unknown to her, but it was intolerable that he
might love Mary.

He was fumbling at the door knob, too, while she tried not to sob. He
found it and they went in and he stood, not knowing what to say or do.
*T am sorry, Louise,” he kept saying.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” she gasped. She did not look at him.

He took her hand to press it, but it lay lifeless in his palm and he let
it go again. “This has been a trying evening on us all,” he stumbled.
“You’d better go to bed. I suppose I ought to stop at the Seaton house on
my way home, so that I can tell Margaret just what’s happened.”

She turned from him and went upstairs, trying not to cry.

The cold air was comforting when he was outside again, the cold air
and being alone. He would have liked to drive otf into the night to have
time to disentangle this strange web of affairs in his own house, but he
knew he must not. He would stop by and see whether Tommy had gone
home, and see what needed to be done for Thomas Seaton yet tonight, if
anything could be done. At least it might comfort Margaret more than his
presence if he came in saying that all was well there.

Christmas lights had been put out, the streets were still, when he turned
in at the circular driveway of the big white house. No one had turned off
the two flaming Christmas trees at either side of the door and they blazed
on. The lights downstairs Were still lit, and upstairs there was one light,
in Thomas Seaton’s own room.

He rang and no one answered, and trying the latch he found the door
open and he walked in.

“Hello,” Tom’s voice called, his drunken voice, as Edward instantly
recognized.

“It is I,” Edward replied. He went to the door of the living room and
saw Tom there, unsteady upon his feet, pacing back and forth, declaiming
to Lewis Harrow, who sat sprawled but sober in a big chair, and to
Tommy, his own son, who held a wineglass in his hands from which he
drank in small gulps, trying not to show his distaste before his uncle.

THE LONG LOVE'

; Wo one understood me except my father,” Tom was ■mournmg.
knew how' I felt when Daintree turned me down. Ever know I was in love
with Lady Daintree of Montrose Hall? She loved me, too, but 'her 'papa:
wouldn’t see it and my mamma told me to come home. I came then,
though if it had been now, I wouldn’t. I went to my father. He said, ‘Never
mind, Tom, my son, There’s, lots of women in, the world.’ That’s where he
was wrong-women of course, but not one like my Dainty. A 'man doesn’t
live alone, of course-not by bread alone and all that. Fioietta Caros!
knows, too. Ever see my Fioretta?”'

‘T’ve taken a look at her,” Harrow said, with interest

Upon this Edward came into the room. “Tommy, it is time for you to
go home,” he said coldly to his son. “Your mother will be worrying about
you. Go now, this minute.”

Tommy set down his glass. “I only came to help Uncle Tom.”

“I will help him now,” Edward said in the same cold voice, the voice
that Tommy had recognized long ago as the voice of one almighty. “Tell
your mother that I shall be home soon.”

“But how am I to go?”

“I’ll take you,” Harrow said. He rose as he spoke. “The minister’s up-
stairs, Ed— and so are Baynes and Sandra. I thought I’d better stay with
Tom, who’s in his cups, as you see,”

Tom had let himself sink into his father’s chair and was beginning to
weep.

“I’ll put him to bed,” Edward said.

He stood while Harrow and Tommy left the room, and then he lifted
Tom by the armpits and pulled him to his feet. “Come, Tom, you’re go-
ing to bed,”

“The kindest man,” Tom was muttering, “The best Goddamned father
—always understand—”

Edward guided him firmly toward the stairs.

“Even said I could marry little Fioretta if I wanted to— know Fioretta
Carosi, Ed? No, ’course you wouldn’t know— I don’t want to marry her—
that’s what I told him-it’s a comedown.”

Tom was clinging to the balustrade, trying to lift his foot for the stair.
A door opened, and at the top of the stairs Baynes stood looking down.
“Leave him to me, Ed,” he called down softly. “Fve done this before—
the night before your wedding, for the first time, but plenty of times since,”

“Who’s this Fioretta he talks about?” Edward demanded.

“John’s sister— didn’t you know?”

“Good God, no!”

“I didn’t tell you. I thought it would mess things up in the shop-but I
thought maybe Margaret had told you.”

“Does she know?”

“Sandra told her.”

660

AMEMCAN lEIFTYCH

SupportiBg a now somnolent form, they took Tom upstairs, his head
lying on Baynes’s shoulder. The two brothers looked at each other.

■ “Queer family we’ve married into,” Baynes said with a ghastly smile.
“Leave him to me, now. I don’t undress him. I just pitch him on the bed.
Sandra is in there with the old man. She might like it if you went in.”

He nodded toward Thomas Seaton’s room, and leaving him Edward
tiptoed toward the half-open door.

Thomas Seaton lay on his great bed, dressed as he had been at the party,
a triumphant smile upon his bearded lips. He had smiled as he died, and
the smile held. Joseph Barclay knelt beside the bed, and Sandra stood, her
face pale as stone and as immobile, looking down at her father. The
minister did not move as Edward came in. He was praying and he finished
his prayer.

“And if it be thy will, O Almighty God, receive unto thyself this soul
We who know nothing of that path which extends beyond our little world
cannot see this soul struggling on its way. But Thou seest, and Thou dost
forgive. In Thy name, Amen.”

Edward stood silent, until the prayer ended and Joseph Barclay rose to
his feet. They shook hands silently. Then the minister said, “I have made
all arrangements, I think, Haslatt. The men will be here in the morning
to see to things. Mrs. Baynes here has told me what her father wanted. It
seems he foresaw something like this.”

“I’ve never seen anybody dead before,” Sandra said suddenly. “It’s
strange when it is my own father.”

“Death is not strange,” Joseph Barclay said. “Nothing is as strange as
life.”

“He looks alive,” Edward mused,

“He is alive!” Sandra cried. “I’ll never believe he is dead. I won’t let him
be dead. I’ll keep him alive thinking about him— forever.”

Neither man answered this. Then the words smote Edward with mean-
ing. So might Margaret too keep her father alive, thinking of him, forever.

“I can’t do anything here,” he murmured. “Baynes is with you, Sandra,
and I had better go home to Margaret.”

He went away forgetting to say good night, and carried with him the
picture of that huge and heavy frame, that mammoth man, that tender
father beloved by all his children, whose ghost they would not lay.

His house, when he stepped in the front door, seemed unnaturally still.
The hall light burned, but the other rooms were dark. Even Margaret’s
room, he had noticed as he came up the drive, was unlighted, and the
guest room where Mrs. Seaton had gone had been dark ever since they
left her there, although Margaret, he supposed, must surely have been to
see her mother before she slept. He hung his coat in the closet under the
stair, and put his hat upon its shelf. Then he paused, halted by some in-
stinct that he did not understand. Surely the house was too silent! He was
not a man of intuition except where the few, the very few, he loved were

THE LONG LOVE

661

coGcemed, but he was aware' now of that intuition. Something was wrong.
, ' , He mounted the stairs, agitated in spite of his exhaustion, his. heart beat-
ing wildly, about what he did not know, and hastening toward Ms own
room, he put on the light. The door to Margaret’s room was open slightly
and now he went' to it and threw it wide. She was there. The light fell
on her sleeping form. He went near: to her and reaching into the pocket
where he kept his pipe and matches, he lit a match. The flame shone upon
her face. She had been weeping. Her lids were swollen, and the lashes were
still wet. Now under the light she opened her eyes heavily.

«^Ned— I waited so long.”

*Ts everything all right?” he cried.

She turned over and pushed back her loosened hair. “What do you
mean?” '

“The house feels queer.”

“I haven’t been out of my room except to go and see Mother. But she
still didn’t want me.”

“Didn’t you go to see Mark?”

She shook her head. “I thought of course he was asleep,”

His first thought now for his son, he turned and went out of the room
and across the hall. At the door of Mark’s room he touched the light
again and it came on softly under a shaded lamp. His eyes were already
on the child’s bed, and he tiptoed to it. Mark was safe, asleep and tranquil.
In this night of death and sorrow he had remained in peace, unknowing.
Leaning on the foot of the bed, Edward felt something under his hand
and looking down he saw Mark’s stocking. Some time after he had been
put to bed the child had got up and hung Ms small stocking at the end of the
crib. It dangled there, empty.

Edward’s heart smote him. They had given up the habit of hanging
stockings when the other children outgrew their babyhood, and had al-
lowed the tree to be their Christmas symbol. But Mark must have heard
about a stocking and feeling lonely, he had climbed out of bed and found
his own and hung it, a sign of wanting sometMng that he did not have.
Oh, these children of his! So did Edward’s heart cry out within Ms breast.
How had he failed them? With all Ms love constantly awake and trembling
over them, they were always going beyond him.

He tiptoed back to the door, intent upon returning to tell Margaret that
the stocking must be filled somehow from the store accumulated for Mark
tomorrow, when in the hall his eyes fell upon the door of Mary’s room.
It stood partly open and he paused. She had taken during the last year to
locking her door at night and when he had remonstrated at this, half hurt
because she wanted to receive his good-night kiss downstairs, she had re-
mained sweetly firm. “Fm really grown up now,” she had replied.

“But you’re at home,” he had reminded her.

“I like my door locked,” she had replied simply.

Now his instinct was roused again. Not Mark— then Mary? He prowled

662

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

toward the door, half afraid lest she cry out against hini. Yet she might
have : merely forgotten it in her weariness. He pushed it: open and stoodj
listening for the sound of her breathing. He heard nothing. The room was
still, the air warm. She had not opened the window.

He turned on the light. The room was empty, the bed not slept in.

‘‘Margaret!” he called in a low voice.

She heard him instantly and came running in her nightgown, her hair
hying over her shoulders. She saw the empty room, the smooth bed, and
began to hasten here and there, while he stood staring and bewildered.

“Oh, the silly child!” she muttered.

She was opening drawers, the closet, a hatbox, a jewelry case.

“Oh, what has she done now!” she muttered.

Then she turned to him and flung her arms about him. “Ned, don’t
look like that.”

“Where has she gone?” he asked.

“I don’t know— I don’t know! Oh, Ned, don’t please look so!”

He flung her away from him. “I’m going up to The Eagle.”

“No, don’t— let’s telephone first”

She ran downstairs, barefoot, and he heard her voice demanding over
and over again Harrow’s telephone number. He stood there, unmoving in
the middle of his daughter’s empty room. There was no answer from The
Eagle. Harrow was not there. He had known the fellow would not be.

She came upstairs again. “Ned, if it’s happened—”

“I must go and get the car,” he said stupidly.

“No, you will not!” she cried. They were still keeping their voices low,
mindful of the other children, mindful of her mother and of Mark. “You
will not go! We’ll hear. Maybe she’s left a note.”

She was searching the room again, and he tried to help her, but he felt
dull and weary enough to die. His instinct was gone, and he did not know
what to do next. There was no note to be found. Mary had never done what
she was supposed to.

“I don’t know where to turn,” he said helplessly. “Where can I go to
find her?”

“You shall not go,” Margaret declared. “You shall stay here in our
house. Come, Ned, come— you will drop.” She pulled him by the hand into
his room.

But he would not yield to her. “I cannot just accept this— as if it were
nothing. Let us think together— where would they go? It is not too late.”

“It is too late,” she insisted. “Look at the sky!”

It was dawn, and the sky was breaking crimson at the horizon.

“You don’t care,” he muttered. “You’ve never cared about her.”

“I do care,” she answered and began to weep. “I care as much as you
do, but I know her better than you ever can. She has got to leave you, Ned
— that’s what you cannot and wiU not understand.”

THE TONG LOVE 663

, . bear her leaving be insisted, "but not like this and with

.him!”

"But you must see that It is only like this~and with him-that she can
really leave you.” They were sitting on the edge of his bed now and her ^
arms were around' him.

, "You can’t understand her,” he said. "You can’t understand her because
you never have loved her as well as the others.”

"I understand her because she is the one most like me,” she retorted.
"She has gone through what T did. She’s loved you too much, Ned-as
I loved my own father. She hasn’t been able to find someone just like, you
to marry.”

"Don’t talk like that”

"Oh, Ned, it’s tnie~and she has chosen somebody utterly different from
you—so that she can be free of you. Oh, she doesn’t know what she’s done
—she doesn’t understand.”

"How is it that you understand?” he demanded.

"Because I was like that, Ned.” She flung out her arms, imploring him.
"You mean you loved your father— better than me?”

"I always loved the kind of man he was.”

"Which I could never be!”

"And that is why I wanted to many you, to be free of Mm— can you see
that, Ned? Try to see it— for Mary’s sake!”

"Then you haven’t really loved me ail these years!”

"I have— I have! Ned, don’t look at me like that, darling! Because I’m
going to love you now as i’ve never known how to love you. My heart has
let go. There’s only you.”

She folded her arms about him again but he did not reply to her words
of love. Yet somehow she had healed him. Mary had so loved him, her
father, that she had needed to cut the bond between them. How slow, how
blind he was, that he had not seen before that what she must have was the
freedom of her own heart!

"I hope she will want to come back,” he said humbly.

"If you let her go, of course she will,” Margaret comforted him.

"It will take time for me to stick haying Lew Harrow here— my son-in-
law, good God!”

"Don’t think about him.”

They sat a long while in silence while the room slowly brightened to
dawn. The sun came over the horizon a globe of melted fire and the snow
grew pink. Not a merry Christmas, he thought heavily, and then he re-
membered.

"Margaret, Mark’s gone and hung his stocking all by himself.”

She rose swiftly. "Oh, the poor babe— where is it?”

"At the foot of his bed. He mustn’t find it empty.”

"Of course not. 111 rob some of the things I was going to put on the
tree for him,”

664

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

She opened a closet, and chose ^ half a dozen , smaE wrapped packages
and a jumping jack. Together they stole out of the room and across the
hall and standing side by side at the foot of his bed they stuffed the stocking
full, and out of the top the jumping jack peered, laughing.

' "In his bed Mark did not wake. He lay high on his single pillow, his arms
outspread, the lashes dark upon his red cheeks.

**How he sleeps!” Edward whispered.

*^As if he never meant to wake,” Margaret whispered back.

“Don’t say that,” he said sharply under his breath,

“Gh, Ned— you’re overwrou^t— I didn’t mean— ”

“I know— forgive me.”

He crawled into his bed a few minutes later, agreeing with her that
they must try to sleep a little while, with the day ahead. Sleep, he told
himself, was impossible, untE he heard from Mary where they were— and
when they were coming back. But he slept at last, and was tortured by
dreams of losing Mary somewhere, a small girl who had never grown up,
and of searching for her and not being able to find her. Then somehow
the little girl she had once been turned to Mark as he was now and it was
his son for whom he searched and whom he could not find.

FOUR

The stillness of Granite Mountain was rent by the war whoops of
two shril! voices. Edward Haslatt looked up mildly from a magazine he
was reading, while he waited for his wife and daughter to return from
their inspection of some new garments in another room. His twin grand-
sons, in full Indian regalia, tore around one of the stone buttresses of this
fantastic house and raced out of sight. He sighed and returned to the maga-
zine. It was a popular one, full of pictures that he disliked because he
thought them meaningless exposures. He had never allowed himself to be
interested in the physical aspects of women other than his wife, and now
he was well past the age for that sort of thing. For this he was grateful
The struggle of the flesh was over. This was not to say that he did not have
proper relations with Margaret. He could and did, as often as he felt in-
clined, which was decently less often as the years went, and she met his
inclination gracefully, if not eagerly. Indeed so smoothly were they attuned
now, as they stood upon the brink of old age together, that he occasionally
felt that he would like to write a book on marriage from the man’s point
of view. There was something original in the idea, as he toyed with it. It
would have to be done anonymously, of course. He knew he would never
do it. Self-revelation, even namelessly, was impossible for him.

Though his life as a modestly successful publisher of books had been
spent among writers of all varieties, he continued to be amazed, amused
and sometimes repelled by their willingness to strip the covers from their
most secret parts. Yet sometimes he envied them the relief of complete
revelation, even while he knew he could never achieve it. For one thing,
Margaret would certainly know about it, and he shrank from such ex-
posure, even to her. She knew him through and through, of that he was
well aware, and yet they had never put each other into words, as once she
said they must. He had never learned her trick of ready speech. Perhaps
she, however, had learned to read through silence.

He put down the magazine restlessly and getting up he went to the

666

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

stiipeBdoBS window of paneless glass, which Lewis had built so many years
ago. Such windows were uncommon then, and visitors from Chedbury had
told each other privately that they would not like to live in all outdoors.
What was a house for if not to hide those inside from those outside?
Chedbury had not changed much in aU these years. Even the Second World
War had not changed the people much. Young men had gone away and
some had not come back, and Chedbury was still wrangling over the sort
of monument they should put up to the dead. Tom Seaton wanted a white
marble shaft in the middle of the green, but Edward had violently opposed
such a monstrosity.

“That’s because Mark wasn’t killed,” Tom had said rudely.

Edward had gazed at him over his glasses. “I believe you, too, did not
suffer a personal loss.”

“At least I went over and saw our men dying,” Tom had retorted, “and
Fioretta’s nephew was killed.”

It was true. John Carosi had lost his son in the Battle of the Bulge.
Edward, who had been quarreling with him only the day before over the
fourth strike at the shop, had put on his hat and coat and for the first time
in his life had gone to South Chedbury. It was the week after Christmas and
there was the usual snow on the ground and the driving had been bad, even
though he no longer drove himself. His frequent trips to New York de-
manded a chauffeur, now that he was no longer young.

He had found John sitting in his shirt sleeves in a tiny parlor, his fists
clenched on his knees as he stared at a picture of Jack in his uniform.
John had grown heavy in his middle age and he was sweating with agony,
the tears miming down his cheeks. Upstairs his wife was wailing among
his daughters,

“John, I’m very sorry to hear this,” Edward had said at once.

He had found it difficult to meet John’s dark and suffering eyes.

“Sit down, Mr. Haslatt,” he said without getting up.

Edward had sat down, his hat and stick between his knees. He felt his
skin prickling with pain.

“Jack was a fine boy,” he said,

“A great boy,” Carosi agreed.

“I wish there was something I could do,” Edward went on. “I know
there isn’t, but for my own sake I just had to come and tell you that I— that
I would really have done anything to prevent this.”

“It’s good of you,” Carosi said. “I just have to sweat it through.”

Silence had fallen between them. He wished that he could assure Carosi
that it was a good way for a boy to die—sweet and right to die for one’s
country, and all that— but he had not been able to say the words. Death
was neither sweet nor right for young men like" Jack, full of life and mis-
chief, and he could not bring himself to say a thing he did not believe. He
sat with his heart aching in his bosom and thinking of Mark, who unless
the vile war ended, would have to get into it

THE LONG LOVE

But' the war ended abruptly. Two^ years later to Edward’s dismay Mark
decided to enlist anyway^ in the air force, *‘to get Ms share over with,” he
said.

Edward' told John Caros! in the shop. "I hope he doesn’t get ground
into the mud, the way mine did,” Carosi had answered. 'That’s what keeps
my wife cryin’. There wasn’t nothing to bring home to bury.”

Edward had not been able to answer this, and before he could conquer
the sickness in the pit of his stomach Carosi had turned away and had said
brusquely, 'T may as well tell you that the union’s goin’ to push for an in-
crease again.” ',

For once Edward had welcomed the quarrel. 'T shall have to stop pub-
lishing books at this rate, and you know it. People won’t buy novels that
cost three and four dollars apiece.”

“They still buy Harrow’s,” Carosi retorted.

“You know I’ve always liked to publish new writers, young ones,” Ed-
ward said. “This way I don’t dare take the risk.”

“That’s not my business,” Carosi replied.

“It would be your business if Haslatt Brothers failed.”

“Personally Fd be sorry, but the union would take care of me,” Carosi
had said firmly,

* . . He lost his fight with the union and wages went up again. What he
had said was true. In any struggle the new and the young went down
and sorrowfully he rejected manuscripts of young and awkward writers.
He was safe enough only so long as the half dozen or so of his best-selling
older authors kept alive. Their books were not as good as they had been—
even Harrow’s were not. Writers were, he supposed, confounded by the
times.

So, for that matter, was he. Mark was still in the air force and he wished
he would come home. What was the use of risking one’s life every day to
carry food into Berlin? He had never wanted the boy to be a pilot. But a
son paid no heed nowadays to what his father wanted. His mind harked
back, upon this, to his own father. Remembering that kind gray figure,
now so long dust save for the spirit of this memory, he took pride in
thinking that he had never really defied his own father. Then his sense of
justice reminded him that neither had he, as a young man, been confronted
with the issues of life and death that faced Mark now.

His imagination, always slow, was nevertheless strong when it was lit by
love, and he thought of Mark waking in the morning, day after day, to
consider, however swiftly, whether night would see him still alive. The lift
was as safe as it could be made, Edward supposed, and yet he had made
it his duty to know how many young men actually were killed in this cold
combat with a country monstrous in its silent power. He was not for a
moment confused by any illusions. It was not to feed hungry people
that Mark continually risked his life. Power was being matched against

668

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

power, evea ia this trivial way, .aad his son— oh, agony to think of it— was
merely expendable.

:: outside the door and he tamed from the window,

glad to be distracted from his constant and secret worry over Mark.
Margaret came in ready to go home. She had put on her hat and the jacket
to her new spring suit. It was a matter of course nowadays that she bought
her clothes in New York, and this suit was the result of her going with
him last week. She and Sandra had gone to some fancy place and picked
it out, and at the same time she had bought some things for Mary. He took
enormous pride in Margaret’s good looks. It was an achievement when a
woman kept as slim, or almost as slim, as she had been and without wrin-
kies. Tom’s wife, Fioretta, had run to fat, in the way of Italian women.

Strange marriage that! Thomas Seaton was only cold in his grave when
Tom had suddenly decided to marry the pretty Italian girl who was John
Carosi’s youngest sister, twenty-six years younger than he, and almost as
many years younger than Tom. There had been no wedding, Tom had
informed the family one day that he and Fioretta would be married and
sail at once for Italy, where he might stay a year. He had stayed four
months, and meantime Mrs. Seaton, restless in the big empty house, had
gone to live in Paris with Dorothea, her divorced sister. Tom had come
back suddenly because Fioretta was pregnant and he wanted his child born
an American. He had declared that he wanted no children, but that Fi-
oretta, incurably maternal, had cheated him. She had continued to cheat
him amiably, and the Seaton house was noisy with three rather spoiled but
extremely beautiful little girls.

Edward was secretly fond of his Italian sister-in-law, while realizing that
it was a comedown for the Seaton family. But the new times were very
queer. Nothing was as it had once been. His own mother, though it had
been no business of hers, had made a fuss over the marriage. ‘T never
thought we’d be connected with South Chedbury through the Seatons,” she
had said acidly.

She never knew either, he supposed, how nearly Baynes and Sandra
had come to a divorce five years ago. Sandra had even gone to Reno.
As he had surmised, this time it was money, and no other than Harold
Ames, still president of a New York bank. It had not come off, however.
The directors had met and after violent argument had mformed Harold
that it would make people lose confidence in the bank if he divorced his
old wife to marry a woman who though not young, perhaps, at least looked
sinfully young, and if he persisted, another president would be chosen.
Harold, confronted with loss of prestige and mindful of his bald head, at
which Sandra had unwisely already ^^poked some fun, withdrew prudently
before anything was made public.

Sandra had come home at once, pretending that she had only been on a
trip. She brought back, with her infallible instinct, a novel about New Mex-

THE LONG LOVE

ICO written by a ■ young veteran ' who, dying with toberculosis, had ' gone to-
end his days in the sun, and she had been frank to forestall scolding.

see now that Hal only loved me as a sort of shadow sister of youis/’
she had told Margaret. ''I was a fool,” she added honestly, “and I shan’t be
one again. Baynes is an archangel and too good for me.”

Baynes was, in a dry way, a saint, Edward admitted. After their mother
had died of double pneumonia the winter of unprecedented snows, when
Chedbury was without light or fuel for nearly a week, and the whole of
New England was winterbound, Baynes had taken Louise to the New York
office, where she had become a perfectionist with the adding machine
and had risen to be treasurer of the company. Never again had she or
Edward referred to the single dreadful night when she had revealed her-
self of a heart. He continued mildly affectionate toward her, as his sister,
and she grew less and less affectionate toward anybody. She maintained a
two-room apartment in New York, furnished with her mother’s things,
and developed a zeal for museums, and had become, to Edward’s astonish-
ment, something of an expert in Japanese art. She had a few friends, equally
absorbed, and he supposed she was happy. At any rate, he had never been
able to do anything about Louise.

Margaret was drawing on her pearl-gray gloves. The gray suit, light
enough almost to match her white hair, was, as she well knew, singularly
good with her pink cheeks and blue eyes. Her little vanities pleased him
and made him love her the more fondly. Beside her Mary looked like a
warm dark little dove— a darling dove at that, very pleasant in her swirling
brown skirts. Edward liked the new long skirts, after the years of tight
and narrow ones, from whose knees he had so often averted his eyes.

“Shall I tell him?” Margaret asked of her daughter.

“Tell me what?” Edward demanded. “Of course I’m to be told.”

“Mary is going to have another baby,” Margaret announced.

Mary smiled at her father. The marriage, contrary to all his expectations
and even wishes, had been a very happy one. Enveloped in her husband’s
worship, Mary had grown softly dependent and willfully clinging as she left
her girlhood behind.

“Lew is going to be surprised,” she said sweetly.

“When’s he coming back?”

“Next week.”

Harrow had flown to London to quarrel with his English publishers over
a cut in royalties. The internal troubles of a socialist Britain were none of
his affair, he had declared loudly over the transatlantic telephone, and he
did not intend to be impoverished by Englishmen. It was not as if he were a
Socialist or a Communist or any of tbfese new kinds of persons. As the son
of a drunkard and a laundry woman he knew enough about people to be-
lieve that they would always sponge on others who had regular jobs, and
he considered socialism a delusion, devised by the sons of the rich out of

670

AMERICAN TEIPTTCH

guilty conscience HBd idleness. Anybody else, he often said, would know
better. People would take all they could get, just as he did.

' thought you weren’t going to risk this business again,” Edward grum-
bled. ‘‘When the twins were bom I certainly remember hearing Lewis say
he wouldn’t let you have any more children.”

‘‘He did say that,” Mary replied. Her dark eyes, full of soft mischief,
looked into his with deep and worldly wisdom.

“You didn’t embark on this purposely, did you?” Edward inquired.

“Not really,” she said, ambiguous in his presence. Her soft red lips
folded with some of her old stubbornness.

Ah, well, she had grown very far away from him. The days when he
had felt her very flesh was his were long gone. She had become a pretty,
rather distant woman, who stirred in him only now and then the memories
of a small oversensitive girl. If he had lost her there seemed nevertheless
to be some sort of increasing friendship between her and her mother,
though less a mother-daughter relationship, perhaps, than that of two
women who were able at last to like one another. He did not pretend to
understand it, especially when he remembered past antagonism and how
often he had tried to console his child.

“Well, good-by,” he said, sighing. “You’ll have to make your own peace
with your husband. At least the doctors will be better now than they were
ten years ago. I suggest, however, that you don’t make it twins again.”

Both women laughed, which was what he had intended them to do. He
stooped to kiss his daughter, his dry lips frosty and not touching the rich
red of her full mouth. He had a horror of lipstick staining his clipped white
mustache.

“Good-by, darling,” Mary said comfortably. “If you see the Indians
on the way down the mountain, please tell them to come and get ready for
lunch. I wish you’d stay but Mother says you won’t.”

“No, no. I like my meals in peace,” he declared.

From the comfortable sedan car he looked at his daughter as she stood
on the stone threshold of her home. The wind was blowing her short brown
curls and except for the content and the wisdom in her eyes she might
have been a girl. Certainly she stilMooked young enough to be Harrow’s
daughter. He waved and then spoke to the chauffeur as the car moved
away.

“Be careful how you go around the bends. My grandsons are probably
hiding behind a rock somewhere.”

Under me robe his hand sought Margaret’s, as usual. He liked to sit
beside her, hand in hand, and watch the familiar landscape of Chedbury
rise nearer as they descended.

“I wondered why Mary wanted all those negligees,” Margaret said,
smiling.

“Is it safe to have a Caesarean after thirty-five?” he inquired anxiously.
It had been apparent ten years ago when the twins were ready to make

THE LONG LOVE

671

their dual' appearance that Maiy*s 'fr was too , delicate for normal'
functions— too delicate, he did not doubt, to be married at all to the gross-
.ness of a man like Lewis Harrow, but on that dark picture he' would not
allow himself to dwell He had not been able to sleep the night after Mary’s
wedding. What was the fellow doing to his little child? It had been almost
better not to 'know where she was, the. night she ran away. But the next
morning had brought' them news in her own voice over' the: telephone. 'They
were in some little town in Maine, having driven all night, and they were
at that moment going to be married before a justice of the peace.

“Stop!” he had commanded that soft determined voice ringing in Ms
ear. *‘You mustn’t do this, Mary! I forbid it—absolutely!”

‘T will do it,” she had replied and had hung up the receiver. He heard
the click which cut her off again and he had turned to Margaret, who was
standing beside him, her hands clasped tightly at her throat

**She’s getting married now!” he had gasped.

‘‘Where?” Margaret had cried.

He had stared at her blankly. ‘T don’t know!” Only then had he real-
ized that Mary had not even spoken the name of the town. Ah, purposely
she had not told him the name of the town!

She and Lewis Harrow had not come home for nearly two years. They
had gone to England and to France. When they did come home to The
Eagle it was to rest and to prepare for the birth of the children. He had
not been able to believe that the swollen little figure was that of his Mary,
his child. For a brief while, when she lay at death’s door before the doctor
had decided to operate, he had reclaimed her again.

“You shouldn’t have married her!” he had exclaimed in utmost agitation
to Harrow. “This is your— your— excessive vitality.”

In the midst of his own terror Harrow had paused to stare at him and
then to burst into loud and unexplained laughter.

When Mary was saved, however, and he went in to see his grandsons,
he felt no return of his brief recognition. There she lay, pale and placidly
triumphant in her bed, a robust if small infant in either arm. He had been
compelled to readjust himself quickly.

“Well, well,” he had said with something more than his usual vigor.

“Nice, aren’t they?” she had asked.

“They look healthy,” he had replied with reserve.

They were healthy. He believed that his grandsons were overstaffed with
vitamins. It was difficult, moreover, to talk to two boys, and one could
never get them separately. One boy, he sometimes thought, he could have
interested in something, say in stamps, or even in some of the types at the
printing shop, but two were disconcerting. They began to romp at any
moment— rough-housing, they called it. And a grandparent had no chance
nowadays in competition with radio programs and comic books, lliese pre-
occupations of the immature he deeply disapproved, and yet such was the
softness of his heart that he could not forbear picking up a handful of

672

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

tile wretcliedly printed . books from the newsstands where, be bongM^^^t^
morning papers on his days in New York, Two or three times, troubled
by the effect of the lurid pictures on his descendants, he had tried to read
some of the pages and had not the least notion of what they were about.
He was appalled at the taste of his grandsons. There must be, he told
himself, something in these comics that he did not see, just as he could
not see what Mark had enjoyed in his endless evenings about town, aim-
lessly, or so he feared, pursuing pleasure. But at the thought of Mark, his
heart forbade judgment

A yell surpassing any he had ever heard before broke off his thoughts.
The car came to a violent stop, and two painted heathen jabbered at the
window.

‘‘What are they saying?” he demanded of Margaret

“Give them each a dime,” she said, smiling. “They are pretending to
hold us up.”

“But isn’t it very bad for them to think they can succeed?” he asked,
anxious as always for their morals.

“It doesn’t mean an5rthiEg,” she said comfortably and felt for her own
purse.

“Oh, m do it,” he said with some irritation, “if it has to be done, that
is.”

He took out his wallet and opening the window he gazed into two round
and ruddy faces, so charming in smiles that his heart softened again and
trying not to let Margaret see, he took out two quarters instead of dimes
and pressed them into the filthiest hands he had touched for years.

“Mind you, this is all against my principles,” he said earnestly in the
slightly didactic voice of which he was almost entirely unconscious, except
when, as now, it grated surprisingly on his own ears. “You shouldn’t hold
up anybody— most of all your own poor old grandfather. I need my
money for my old age. What if I have to go to the poorhouse?”

Compunction appeared in the two pairs of dark eyes,

“You can come and live with us,” Peter suggested.

“We’ll come and bring you home,” Paul added,

“You still want the quarters, I notice,” he said dryly, although his
heart was further softened to the point, he told himself, of folly.

“Just for the present we need them,” Paul said sweetly, clutching his
booty.

They let out their war whoops and seeing them dash into the underbrush,
he remembered their mother’s message and shouted after them, “Go home
to luncheon!” He sank back panting. “I doubt they can hear anyone, they’re
making so much noise,”

“Their stomachs will lead them homeward,” Margaret replied. She felt
for his hand again and leaning toward him she kissed his ear while the car
started forward. He glanced involuntarily at the little mirror. The chauf-
feur’s eyes were set coldly ahead, thank God.

THE LONG LOVE

673

■ : ^‘NoW' whaf s that for?” he demanded, in' a guarded voice.

: :^*Becaiise you gave' them quarters, Ned,”- she replied. They looked at
each other for a long minute, her eyes were. soft and still so blue, and then
he was abashed.

‘‘Oh, well,” he grumbled, “it’s only once-though of, course they are
utterly" without discipline.”

He held her hand firmly and was conscious of deep inner happiness.

This welling inner happiness was something that had grown only as he
approached what was commonly called old age. In years he knew that
indeed he was an aging if not an old man. Mark, his youngest son, was
twenty his next birthday and Mark had been a belated child. A child almost
perfect, he often reflected with something like fatuousness. He had spent
much time upon Mark’s education. The other children had grown up in
the usual round of schools and college, but Mark had, so to speak, been
hand grown.

It had been a disappointment he did not acknowledge even to himself
that this dearest son had not shown the slightest sign, as yet, of interest
in the firm of Hasiatt Brothers. Instead, by some astonishing twist of in-
heritance Tommy, after deciding not to marry Dinny and then sowing an
agitating number of wild oats in that unhappy period between wars, had
settled down into the family firm with a gaiety combined with a cynical
prudence that forced Edward to realize that perhaps he had produced a
publisher superior to himself by nature. By a process of inheritance far
beyond the understanding of man, Tommy combined in himself his father’s
love of books and his uncle Baynes’s mstinct, or flair. Sandra loudly pro-
claimed Tommy’s virtues and claimed him as the son she herself should
have had, if she had only had the sense to know it earlier. After years of
refusing to have any children Sandra now at a lean and chic middle age
wished that she had let nature take its course with her, although she added,
“Nature on the loose would probably have produced something that looked
neither like Baynes or me.” She remembered the grimness of the remote
Uncle Henry Hasiatt, now long dead, and declared finally that his visage
alone made her content to be childless. Nevertheless she adored her
Tommy, and was far more proud than Margaret had been when he chose
as his wife the prettiest debutante of her year in New York.

After this marriage Sandra had tried to force Tom and Fioretta out of
the old Seaton house, because she maintained that Fioretta made it look
like something in South Chedbury whereas Diantha would have made it
what it had been designed to be, a family seat.

Edward had taken the side of Tom and Fioretta, however. He was grate-
ful to her for marrying Tom and removing him as a bad influence upon his
elder son, and therefore even remotely, perhaps, from Mark. At any
rate it was only after Tom’s marriage that the great change had appeared
in Tommy.

Thinking of Fioretta now he drew his old gold watch from his pocket.

674

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

^ We have time to. stop by Tom’s, if you like. I don’t' suppose Mary would
mind if we mention her condition. Fioretta is always so pleased at the pros-
pect of a new cMld in the family.”

Wery well,” Margaret replied, her voice pleasant

Some moments later Edward leaned toward the chauffeur and directed
his stop at' the white painted gate which Tom had set' between the stone
posts in order to keep his offspring within the bounds of Fioretta’s hearty
cries. Fioretta sensibly had not wanted the house changed and it looked as
it always had, a little less spotless than of old, perhaps, as to white paint.
The flowers, too, had degenerated from lilies and English tree roses to a
general effect of zinnias and marigolds, and he disapproved the row of tail
sunflowers against the dignified background of the house itself. Fioretta kept
chickens in the back yard, and considered sunflower seeds conducive to
eggs.

As usual she saw them through the window and came running out to
greet them warmly. She had been plump when Tom married her, a darkly
rosy creature with huge black eyes and a red mouth. Now she was frankly
more than plump. She still loved the bright deep orange hues and crimsons
of her girlhood and they somehow became her in spite of spread.

‘‘Uncle Ed~Auntie Margaret!” she cried in her fresh voice. The one
sign of her insecurity in this family was that she had never brought herself
to call them by their first names. Only when the children grew old enough
to talk had she solved the problem by calling them what she taught the
children to say.

“Come in, do! I’ve just got lunch on the table-special ravioli Tom does
love. Ah, now, sit down! For what else should you come just when I tell
the girl to dish up?”

“We can’t, dear,” Margaret said gently. “Ned doesn’t digest starches,
and luncheon is waiting for us, Fm sure. And you know how it puts the cook
out if we don’t come home. We just wanted to see you and the children
and Tom, if he’s home, to tell you the latest family news.”

“The children are coming home from school this minute and Tom is
mending the grape arbor. I tell him every year we should have more
grapes so I can make ail our wine at home. It is better for Tom than
the boughten stuff. My poppa taught me how to make it so good, like they
do at home in Italy.”

“It is delicious,” Margaret said.

“Now,” Fioretta said in her cozy busy voice, “what’s the news?”

“We’ve just come from The Eagle and Mary told us today that she is
going to have a baby.” Margaret spoke simply as though to a child.

“My God, how nice!” Fioretta’s great eyes rolled and she threw up her
hands. “So she’s goin’ to get ahead of me? She’s goin’ to have the next
baby. Fm goin’ to tell Tom. He won’t let me have any more little babies.
What you think of that? And me with my arms empty! My children are

THE LONG LOVE

675

all too big. You know what? That Viola of mine she’s kissing a boy al-

ready. Caa you imagine!” .

Fioretta lung , back her head and laughter rolled from her rich red
mouth.'

Edward as ■ usual was silent. He .basked in, this generous ■ presence of
Fioretta. Actually they had very' little to say to each other. Fioretta had
never, so far as he knew, read a book. John Carosi, now, was a reader.
In later years he had often quarreled with his employer over the books
published by Haslatt Brothers. Last year, when Edward had chosen to
publish The Rights of Employers in a Democracy, written by the head of
a great utility firm, John had thrown his gray cap on the floor one morning
when Edward came into the" shop.

“Mr. Haslatt, I don’t work the press on that book!”

“Very well, John,” Edward had replied. ^I’ll give it to one of the other
men.” ; , .

"'*1 don’t work in this shop,” John had declared next

don’t want you to stop with me any longer than you wish,” Edward
had replied with dignity. “But I do reserve the right to publish two sides
of any question. Don’t forget I was entirely willing to publish The Union
and the Worker last year.”

‘^There can’t be two sides to the right,” John said.

‘There are two sides to everything,’^ Edward had retorted. He had pro-
ceeded through the shop, examining, with eyes grown quick and shrewd
through the years, the presses pounding out the books he had chosen to
present to the world. He had steadfastly resisted both Baynes and Tommy
on the matter of enlarging the works.

‘T do not intend to publish more books,” he said at least several times
a month. “Better ones, yes, every year—but no more.”

“Come next Sunday then, please,” Fioretta was urging. “I will make
something special for you, Uncle Ed, not starch, a beef stew like something
in Italy. Please, please!”

The children had reached home and came swarming out in a dark brood,
all of them more Italian than English in their looks. Their eyes were lively,
their voices piercing, and their health apparent in every move and word.
They surrounded their mother and hugged her ardently while she laughed.
“Look, now, at my monkeys. Children, you should beg Uncle Ed to come
to Sunday dinner!”

“Uncle Ed, please.”

“Auntie Margaret, make him.”

He was inevitably pleased at their loud desire to have his company,
though why he did not know, for he found very little to say to chfidrea
at any time.

“Now why do you want me to come?” he demanded, mildly jocular. “I
can’t run around with you and I don’t play any games.”

Dark eyes met dark eyes and silence fell.

676

AMERICAN' TRIPTYCH

: .^‘Speak, children,” Fioretta commanded with the warm^ imperiomness
born of absolute love. “Say what is in your hearts. Don’t be afraid.”

; '-'¥iola threw back her heavy curls. ‘TH tell you why, Uncle Ed— we all
feel you like us.”

■ ^*There!'”,Tioretta cried admiringly, “Isn’t that the truth! 'Nice the way
she said it!”

“Very nice!” he admitted, and putting out his hand he touched the
child’s warm olive cheek.

“Lovely,” Margaret said tenderly, “and we will come. Now you must all
go and have your luncheon.”

The ardent children left their mother and pressed around them, and
upon this picture in the warm spring sunshine Tom appeared, the father
of this family, to be sure, and yet always seeming somewhat puzzled and
even astonished by what he had brought almost unwittingly into existence.

Lean and sandy hued as ever, he wore an overall of khaki color and in
his hand he held a pruning knife. “They’ll strangle you,” he said, “I know
what it’s like. They try to choke me every day of their lives.”

He waved the knife, pretending to stay them as they swarmed now to-
ward him at the sound of his voice. He elbowed the older ones aside ruth-
lessly and opened his arms to his youngest daughter. “Come here, Baby,”
he said. “You’re the only one that can kiss me. Here on the cheek, please!”

She planted a noisy kiss at the spot he indicated and Margaret laughed.
“Tom, Tom, I wonder that our father doesn’t rise from his gravel”

Fioretta turned solemn. “You think the old man wouldn’t like it?”

“He’d love it, bless him,” Margaret said. “He’d love you, Fioretta. Bless
you, too,”

She kissed Fioretta’s round and rosy cheek. “We all do, darling. Don’t
mind me. And if I say anything you don’t understand just forget it Tom
knows what I mean and he’ll tell you.”

“Aren’t you going to stop for lunch?” Tom derhanded.

“No, dear. We’re coming Sunday.”

Fioretta suddenly bethought herself of the news. “Tom, what you think?
Mary is going to have a baby! Now, Tom, I ask you, why can she have a
baby and not me?”

“Shut up, Fioretta,” he answered with affection. “We’ve got more than
we need now and there’U be an accident or two. I know you.”

“Aw, Poppa, we’d like a new baby!” Viola pleaded.

“You just wait, my girl,” Tom told his daughter. “You’ll have your own
all too soon.”

He turned to his sister,
sider the twins?”

“It’s too late now,” Margaret
sign of her years. “We’ll just
her. He means to, but
novel,”

THE LONG ■ LOVE

■ Tom’s thin and handsome lip lifted in something like a sneer. /‘Connt
upon it, Edj there’ll be a childbirth in the book, a husband, like as' not,
hanging over his dying wife’s bed, and moaning that he’d rather have lost
the child.”

■ ;*‘Don’t joke, Tom,” Margaret said sharply.

: Fioretta, listening, was suddenly angry. “Ain’t he wicked? My God,
sometimes I think I got the worst man in the worldl Mary won’t die— what
the devil!”

When she was angry and in the bosom of the family Fioretta returned
wholeheartedly to South Chedbury. Indignation burned in the hot gaze she
now bestowed upon her husband.

^*Shut up, Fioretta,” Tom said, from habit. “Well, we’ll be looking for
you 'Sunday, Ed.”' ■

They turned away, knowing that until they left Tom’s brood would de-
lay in the sunshine, and sitting in the car again, hand in hand, they rode in
silence, each aware of warmth in the other’s heart,

“Do you really think your father would have approved South Ched-
bury in his house?” Edward asked.

“Of course it couldn’t have been in his day,” she replied. “Things were
so defined then, somehow. Mother would have made it impossible for Fior-
etta. But if it had been Mother who died instead of Father, I think he could
have lived there quite happily with Fioretta, growing drowsy m the grape
arbor, drinking her wine and spotting his waistcoat more and more—
and the little girls would have loved him extravagantly.”

“They love everythmg extravagantly,” he murmured.

He was surprised at her reply.

“Do you know, Ned, I’ve come to believe in extravagant love— it’s the
only thing that makes life in this world possible. Maybe Fioretta’s children
will teach us all,”

He knew the deep distress in her mind these days. She had given up much
that she had once done. After the war she had even given up Red Cross
work. “It all seems useless,” she had said to him one night. “It’s just
patchwork. There has to be something different in the world, a new ap-
proach to the whole of life.”

They talked together now more than they ever had. He looked back
on his earlier years with a sort of wonder. He had been so busy when his
children were young that he had very little time for talk, or indeed for
anything except the anxieties of a livelihood for those whom he loved and
had too little time to enjoy. It was he alone, or so he had felt, who stood
between them and the overwhelming world.

One of his most successful books had been written by an explorer in
the jungles of Sumatra, an adventuring sort of fellow whom he had heartily
disliked when he met him at a dinner Baynes and Sandra had given for
him in New York when the book was published. The jungle, however,
Edward had never forgotten. It had crept up on him in the night for years'

' 678 '

AMERICAN TRIETYCH

Bata lie had been able ' to identify it with the oveiwhelmmg; world:. ^
feared. Stoutly conservative, even to the extent of present distress over the
socialism now rampant in England, he would have declared himself at all
times unafraid of ^e insecurities of extreme individualism. Yet the night*
mare of the encroaching jungle had beset him until one night in Ms wakeful-
ness he had confided to Margaret the recurrence of the dream.

seem to be walking along a narrow path, enclosed in walls of the
most livid green trees and vines. They aren’t ordinary greenery— nothing
like what we have here in New England. They’re horrible, they keep grow-
ing new branches and tentacles. The roots of the trees are not even decent.
They’re like great sucking mouths, clutching the earth and draining it dry.
The further I go— and I must go on— I can’t help myself, it seems— the
tighter the green walls press around me, and I can’t see ahead. You are
following behind me— sometimes just you and Mark, sometimes all of you
—sometimes lately only Mark. I keep fighting off the horrible green tendrils
reaching out. But they get me at last and I wake, strangling.”

Margaret, waked from sleep, had listened, her eyes startled, “You’re
worrying about something,” she declared. “You haven’t told me every-
tMng.*^

“I’ve told you all I know,” he had protested in honesty.

For the next few months she had persuaded him toward going to a
psychiatrist, wMch he had resisted with profound conviction that such stuff
was ail charlatanry. In the end he had gone, however, commanded by
Wynne, his doctor these many years.

“Your blood pressure is far too high, and yet you’re as lean as a
hound dog,” Wynne had told him. “It isn’t overeating that’s doing it. It’s
whatever is gnawing at your mind. You’re a born worrier like your New
England ancestors. Go and have a talk with some professional— unless you
can confess to a Catholic priest.”

Confession was impossible to Edward’s Protestant mind, and he had in
the end made a carefully noncommittal appointment with an unknown
though highly recommended name in New York. There he had gone soon
after the inevitability of the war had burst upon his dismayed and terrified
consciousness. Dr. Hastings had proved a tall, spare, pleasantly cold-look-
ing gentleman who had listened respectfully to Edward’s halting account
of his nightmare. A succession of detached though acute questions had
led after two hours or so to a conclusion that had been immensely helpful.

“There is nothing wrong with you, Mr. Haslatt,” Hastings had said.
“You seem an exceptionally well-balanced and disciplined person. What
you are suffering from is a disease called modern times. You, like all of
us, have no security. Our American way of life so far does not provide it
Whether this is good or bad is beside the point. I am no moralist. But you
have to recognize that though you are by nature and choice an individualist
of the strongest dye, yet the fact is you are unconsciously frightened of
the present hazard of extreme individualism, even wMle you reject any-

THE LONG LOVE 679

thing else. Yon must learn to accept insecurity. As long as you live our
society will not provide it for you. Say to yourself, ‘I have an ample income
and a satisfying wife’-you are sure you are telling me the truth there?”

‘^Completely,” Edward replied. “I am what is called a one-woman man
— that is, in my wife I have found aH women. She is beautiful and in-
telligent.” ■ ■ ■

“Very unusual,” Dr. Hastings had said in a dry voice. “Such being the
case, I am sure you can deal with your own fears of insecurity. Consider it
part of the world state of mind, the atmosphere of our generation,”

He had left the doctor’s office strangely lighthearted. It was true that
in the midst of the hazards of business he had always made a good and
on the whole increasingly ample income, though he was sound rather than
rich. He had never lost anyone he loved, his parents he supposed scarcely
coming under the category of real love. Margaret had passed through her
middle years without the neuroticism to which he had heard women were
susceptible, and she did not find him unpleasing in their intimate relations,
even as she grew older. He tried, of course, to be considerate. He had even
bought a book on menopause in women, which she had snatched away from
him, laughing at him as she did so.

“Don’t read up on me, Ned!” she had exclaimed. “I’m as normal as
possible, thank God, and I still love you.”

She had been a perfect wife, or as nearly so as a mortal man could
expect. Her few faults were negligible— a tendency to be careless about
the house as she grew older, dust and so on seeming less important to her
while it became more important to him, and his clothes were not always
sent to be pressed when he wished them to be. He felt, sometimes, too, that
she thought about a good many things of which she did not tell him, though
when he questioned her, asking, for example, so direct a demand as,
“What are you thinking about when you look like that?” she answered
only vaguely. Once she had almost lost her temper.

“I do wish,” she had said with some of her old girlish vigor, “that you
would not ask me what I am thinking. My thoughts are ungovernable and
always were. I let them lead me by the nose and I’d be ashamed sometimes
to tell where I am.”

“You needn’t be ashamed before me,” he had reminded her.

“Oh, I wouldn’t be exactly ashamed,” she had said carelessly. “It’s just
that it would be too bothersome to explain how I got to thinking whatever
Fm thinking,”

“Do you remember,” he bad reminded her, “how, when we were about
to be engaged, you demanded complete and perfect truth between us?”

This she had answered inconsequentially, he thought. She had said, “I
knew nothing whatever then about being married. If I had always told you
the truth, you’d have divorced me by now.”

“Never!” he exclaimed, much alarmed.

“Besides,” she had gone on, “what I didn’t know is that when two people

680

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

live together long and closely they tell each other less and less in words.
They know everything aiiyway-~everythiiig, that is, except what they don’t
want to know.”

*®as there been something about me that you haven’t wanted to know?”
he had asked after some thought

“Nothing important,” she had said in the same half-careless fashion.
“When you’ve fretted— and you do fret, Ned, though I wish you wouldn’t
—it doesn’t always seem worth while to bother about what little thing is
fretting you.”

He had been a good deal hurt when she said this and had retired Into
silence. Then after reflecting upon it he had been compelled to acknowledge
that she was right. Had she been torn by every worry that had tortured
him, she would have lost her calm, that blessed atmosphere in which he
found such strength and refuge. All the same, it had been his fretting,
as she called it, that had made his business a success when other publishers
were failing. Not even Harrow could have saved him had he been in-
cautious.

Now on this perfect day in May all struggles were in the past. He had
got rid of the jungle, by will power and by reading philosophy again. In
his day at Harvard William James had been a professor of philosophy and
remembering that vivid life-loving figure, he had returned to books he had
not read since he left the presence of his teacher. He had been too shy to
tell James what he felt about him in those college years, and had passed
through his classes merely a name on a roll call.

Reading and rereading these books, Edward in his approaching old
age felt a new vigor of the soul return to him. William James had been an
American, he told himself, a philosopher, a thinking active man, who glo-
ried in the pragmatism that was a part of America’s very soul. He read
aloud sometimes to Margaret in the evening the striding powerful words,
the abhorrence of violence and war which today, in spite of the mildness of
the May sunshine, overshadowed the sky of every intelligent mind.

What had happened to make Americans now think the cruelties of vio-
lence signified strength? Strength was to be found only in “the moral equiv-
alent of war,” a powerful wisdom, a discipline stronger than any military
force could develop, because it was discipline of the self by the self.

He dared not voice such thoughts. Chedbury would never have under-
stood them and he would have been smeared with red. Yet did the young
men never think such thoughts, as they marched on alien roads in half the
countries of the world?

He remembered a ni^t, soon after Pearl Harbor, when Mark was a
boy of thirteen. He had gone upstairs to Mark’s room to tell him good night
—a discarded habit, for the growing boy did not like to be babied. But he
had not been able to restrain his fears. Surely the war would be over before
Mark grew up. He had bent over his son and had kissed his windbumed
cheek. Mark had been skating aU day on the first thick ice of the season.

THE LONG LOVE

68 !

‘'^You’ve had a good day,” Edward had said. “I can tell it from your
face.”

'I’ve had a swell day,” Mark had replied. He had gazed into his father’s
face for a long moment, his eyes dark with what he could not know. Then,
inexplicably, he had spoken those words that were graven upon Edward’s
heart'

'T hope I can live,” Mark had said.

Edward had restrained the first impulse of his life to weep wildly. "Of
course you will live,” he had said. Then unable to bear the pain in his
throat he had gone into the hail and shut the door and let the silent tears
fiow down his cheeks. He had not been able to repeat the scene to Mar-
garet, for shame lest he weep again, and it remained locked within him.

Neither of his sons had been interested in philosophy. Tommy had
majored harmlessly in English literature and Mark had cared for nothing
but science, and especially physics. Sandy had actually gone in for medi-
cine. He did not approve women doctors but he felt it only decent not to
say so while his younger daughter plowed her difficult way through to
successful practice. She had put up her shingle now in Boston, and every
quarter he paid such bills as she had not been able to manage and prayed
that she would marry some decent man and give up the struggle. Sandy,
the grimmest and the gayest of his children, was not likely to give up. She
was handsome rather than pretty, her Grandfather Haslatt having left her
his somewhat too long nose, but she was the favorite of her Grandmother
Seaton and likely, Margaret had said one day, to come into something
substantial when old Mrs. Seaton died.

"That is nothing to me,” he had said stiffiy.

"It’s something to me, you old poker back,” Margaret had retorted
laughing at him. "Sandy will never get married to that nice boy who is in
love with her unless she can pay her share of the expenses.”

"You aren’t wishing for your mother’s death, I hope,” he had replied.

"Of course not,” Margaret had said in her most cheerful voice. "At the
same time, Mother cannot live forever, and I am glad she likes Sandy and
I hope she persuades Aunt Dorothea, who seems perennial, to give what
she has to Sandy, too. Mary doesn’t need it, and the boys can manage.”

"Who’s this fellow in love with Sandy?” he had then demanded.

"Don’t you remember the young man she brought down last Christmas
Eve?”

"Not particularly,” he had been compelled to say, scraping his memory.

"The big one who broke the footstool when he sat on it?”

"That fellow! I remember thinking I wouldn’t like him messing around
inside me-“a surgeon, wasn’t he?”

"He is,” Margaret said. "He has curiously delicate hands. In debt up to
his neck, too, for his education—it’il be years before they can make ends
meet.”

This had troubled him a good deal, and he had pondered ways of mak-

682

AMEMCAN TRIPTYCH

ing marriage possible for this daughter upon whom he had neYer until now
spent much thought. Sandy had been so healthy, so normal, whatever that
meant, that she had grown up almost without his noticing her, except to
see, with an irritation which made him ashamed, that she got better grades
at school than either of her brothers. Ought not parents to make it possible,
he asked himself, for young people to marry at the reasonable hour of the
highest biological urge? He and Margaret had been young, and the costs of
living then were low. Now it was practically impossible, unless one were
a war veteran, to synchronize marriage and biological needs. He had a
horror of the easy sexual intercourse that seemed acceptable today even
among his friends, and though he could see nothing he could do about it,
he did not like the numbers of illegitimate children being born. Such polyg-
amous children were the problems of a monogamous society. Surely there
had been far fewer in his youth. Tom’s daughter Viola, he feared, was not
the premature infant she had been tactfully declared. Very robust, for
prematurity! But nothing had been said in Chedbury, of course— not openly.
Nobody had dared to say anything to him, naturally.

He preferred not to think it possible that Sandy might be sleeping with
her young man, fortified by the astounding amount of protective informa-
tion that she might have. Agitated, however, by this possibility, he had been
casting about in his mind how he could offer her an income without
offending her pride, when Mrs. Seaton died suddenly a year ago this May.
He refused to think it opportune but the truth was there. He and Margaret
had gone over to Paris and had brought the narrow and ancient body
back with them in a metal casket. Margaret had not wept. Prepared for her
tears he had been nevertheless relieved when they did not flow.

**You aren’t hiding your feelings from me?” he had inquired anxiously.

Her hand on his cheek had comforted him. ‘‘No, darling. It was time.”

This was all she had said. They had left an even more desiccated old
woman behind them in the overdecorated French apartment, a frame so
ancient, a visage so withered that it was impossible to believe that for her
sake a young and ardent man had once fled both fame and fortune to
live with her in happy sin for nearly twoscore years.

“Good-by, children,” Aunt Dorothea had said, presenting both her leath-
ery cheeks. To her they were children, though with graying hair and grand-
children of their own.

“It is frightening to live so long,” Margaret had said.

Sitting beside her as they drove into the wide gate of their comfortable
home, he had wondered rather soberly if what she had said was true. It
did not seem possible, this May morning, that anything could be worse
than death.

The pleasant weather held through the week with increasing and un-
seasonable heat. In the garden after breakfast on Sunday morning Mar-
garet exclaimed over flowers forcing themselves to premature blooming.

' THE LONG LOVE : 683

The roses, she told Edward, were pushing out buds that could not come
to: maturity. ,

wonder if that wretched atom bomb has set up some sort of heat
inside the earth,” she mused.

He had been tempted by the ardent sunshine to leave his pile of man-
uscripts, his constant week-end task, and come out into the garden just
as he was, bareheaded and without putting on his topcoat. He saw her,
bareheaded too, busy with a trowel, her sleeves rolled high on her stEl
shapely arms. Sunday was her day of gardening, the aged, vociferous, and
agitating Italian, Tony Antoneili, who considered the garden his possession,
being that day safely at home in South Chedbury. On Mondays Margaret
did not go near the garden, allowing Tony time to get over Ms wrath at
what she had done. By Tuesday they were able to quarrel again without
rancor.

*T suppose Mark could tell you,” Edward now said in answer to her
question. They had discussed the atom bomb through many mealtimes to-
gether. She was positive of its entire evil, and railed at Mm when he could
not utterly agree. It was, he said, only one evil thing in an evil business.
How devastating it really was he could not find out and he had made up
his mind that when Mark came back he would go into the science of this
most devilish of weapons. What troubled him most was not the bomb itself
so much as the lack of moral principle in the scientists who had allowed
themselves to make it. Surely scientists, he had told himself, ought to be the
new leaders of morality, all else having failed. When Joseph Barclay had
preached a violent sermon against the use of the atomic bomb, a sermon
durmg which Margaret had sat tense, her hands clasped tightly together,
Edward had wondered at such resentment. Was not the bomb merely
the logical means of an inhuman process?

This he dared not say to Margaret. Instead he remarked now with a
mildness to suit the day, “I suppose we should be getting ready for church
—unless the sunshine can tempt you to stay home.”

‘T don’t want to go to church,’^ she said, ‘‘and yet somehow these days
I feel we must.”

“Why?” he asked with his undying curiosity concerning aU she felt and
thought.

“Because we are so helpless,” she answered.

He did not ask, helpless against what? He knew that in spite of all he
could do she was somehow, underneath her tranquillity, allowing her per-
sona! content, even her happiness, to become involved in the incompre-
hensible events taking place in the world. Both of them had been vaguely
cheered at the stolid way ia which their own people had taken hold of the
political elections six months ago. Voting Republican from long habit, he
had been amazed to find that Margaret had voted against Mm. She had not
at first wanted to vote at all, maintaining that she despised equally all the

684 '

AMIRICAN TRIPTYCH

presidential candidates. She would not, she declared, even go to the polls.
She would stay home and crochet a doily in her new luncheon set.

he flouted as a gesture. She crocheted beautifully as she did'afl
■ things well, and there were times when he liked to ^ see the ivory needle
in her long narrow hands flashing in and out of the daffodil yellow thread.
But he had learned that when she picked up such handiwork it was in the
nature of a retreat from life.

''You must go,” he had exclaimed. ‘^If you do not the whole of Chedbury
will know, and after your preachments, my dear, in recent years, concern-
ing the responsibilities of women, it would not do. You may cast a blank
ballot, if you like, but you must go into the booth.”

Her stupefaction the next morning had aroused his immediate question,
thought I was making a strong protest vote,” she told him, more con-
founded than he had ever seen her. “Instead Fm on the winning side.”

“What did you do there alone in that booth?” he demanded.

She looked at him with merry eyes. “I voted the straight Democratic
ticket—that’s what I did~as the strongest protest I could think of against
everything I didn’t like.”

“Do you think you’ll like what you got?” he inquired with grimness.

“How do I know what I’ve got?” she countered. “Maybe if I’d known
I was going to get it, I wouldn’t have voted for it.”

He had snorted at this. “That’s democracy for you!”

Afterward in his office he had thought of it again and had laughed
silently and alone. All over the country, he supposed, other stupefied people
wem discovering that they, too, had voted on the winning side. He had
written an unusually cheerful letter to Mark, describing his mother’s sur-
prise, and remarking that for his own part he was glad to see people get
up a little spunk.

Now, in spite of the warmth of the sunshine on this day, he was aware
that the momentary optimism over such spunk was dying down. He did
not at ail like the look of certain signs on the horizon. At his age he did
not care to face what he had gone through before in the depression. He
wished Mark would come home. He could talk to Mark. A misery of long-
ing for his son swept over him and for a moment he saw him so vividly
that he all but cried out, while Margaret bent over the hyacinth bed.

“The white hyacinths are the most beautiful,” she was saying, “I believe
1 11 cut a few spikes and put them on the church altar,”

He did not answer. Lifting his eyes he could imagine he saw Mark’s face,
the strong lines of jaw and high cheekbones, his eyes, dark and filled with
some sort of surprise, gay or not, happy or not, he could not tell. He
was leaning out of the cockpit, as he had seen him lean, when he leaped
up on wings from the earth.

“What did you say, Ned?” Margaret was asking.

“I said nothmg,” he replied. He went on with dfficulty. “Suddenly I saw
Mark.'

THE XONG' LOVE

685

v«yoij saw him?’* ' ,
if he were here.”

He looked at her and saw her wondering, half-frightened face.

^*You’ve been thinking too much about him,” she said. “Come, lefs go to
church,”

^ : Vague as. he was about his religion, and in spite of basic faith being
stii assailed by the manifold doubt of his times, he felt comfort today
in the morning service. The pew he and Margaret- used had belonged to Ms
parents, and he had sat here restlessly as a small boy, and then unwillingly
in his youth. Here, too, his children had sat between their parents. Once
Mark, at three, always unable to be still, had fallen backward through the
seat, and he had reached after him and drawn him up and had hushed
his sobs against his shoulder until he slept.

The church was sweet with the scent of early lilacs, and Margaret had
set the white hyacinths in a silver bowl between two bunches of the feathery
lowers. The place was seldom filled nowadays and it fretted Joseph Bar-
clay that his fiery messages found no response in the cool hearts of today’s
young. Though he loved them and yearned for their souls, they did not hear
him, Mark had been the arch rebel.

“I can’t and won’t go to any more of old Joe’s rantings,” he had said,
see the man behind the words,” Edward had replied.

*T can’t see the man for the words,” Mark had retorted too smartly.

“Shame,” his mother had put in. “Think of all the minister used to do
for you children— the tree at Christmastime, the parties, the baseball in
spring in the square, coaching you at football, getting the money together
for the swimming pool.”

“All granted,” Mark had replied instantly, “But preaching still turns
my stomach, Mother.”

They had not pressed him and when the minister had asked diffidently
why Mark no longer came to church with them, Edward had told the truth.
“They can’t listen to sermons, nowadays, I’m afraid.”

Of Mark’s soul, Edward felt, he knew nothing at all. He had come ne^
to a glimpse of it one night a week before Mark’s enlistment when, his
mother having gone to bed, he and the boy had sat together in the
library, he marking a manuscript for the printer the next day, and Mark
sunk in the biggest chair, and lost in a book of nuclear physics. He had shut
it suddenly with so loud a bang that Edward had started and dropped his
spectacles.

“Sorry, Dad,” Mark had said.

“You are feeling vigorous,” Edward had replied.

“No, only somehow for the first time glad I’m going across instead of
staying home.”

He had looked at his son and it seemed to him that the boy looked care-
worn, as though he had been sleepless.

686

.AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

“Cam : you tel me why?”, he asked, delicate always before apparent
probing.' ■

Mark'had answered after a. moment with strange gravity. postpones
what I really want to do.”

‘‘Well?”

“If I stayed at home Fd go straight on with, my research work in atomic
energy. Ifs what I want to know about, more than anything else. Fve got
to know. The whole future of man depends upon our knowing.”

“Wei?”

Mark had hesitated again. He was rubbing his dark hair slowly with both
hands into something more than its usual disorder. ‘T know a fellow older
than me— just got married. He’s finished college—took exactly the course I
want He has to have a job, of course. Well, the only job he can get is in
one of the new war plants. That’s a fix, isn’t it? You spend four years of
your life learning something and then you’ve got to use what you know to
kll people.”

He had often wondered what Mark felt about war. They had never
discussed it. That night he perceived that this duty was loathsome, and he
longed to spare him, and did not know how. There was no escape for the
young nowadays.

“It can’t last,” he had said, and had heard the words feeble in his own
ears.

Mark had got to his feet and yawned. “It doesn’t do to think. One day
at a time, I guess. And maybe no tomorrow.”

“Don’t say that, son,” Edward had remonstrated. “It sounds cynical.”

“Sorry, Dad-only why are you older ones so afraid of sounding
cynical?”

He had paused upon Mark’s question.

“I suppose we were brought up to believe in the goodness of God,” he
had said at last.

Mark, kicking the coals into the fireplace, had not answered.

“I fear we have somehow failed you,” Edward had continued. “I would
like you to believe in the goodness of God and the value of life, but I don’t
know how to teach you. Things were simpler when I was young.”

“Oh, I believe in the value of life, ail right,” Mark had replied. He
had folded his arms on the big oaken mantel and leaning his head upon
his arms he gazed down into the dying coals. “Life is wonderful— could be,
that is.”

“If what?” Edward asked, daring another step.

“If it could last,” Mark said.

He shook himself like a big dog, stretched his arms their enormous length
and yawned again, “Why am I getting serious at this time of night? Must
be talking in my sleep! Good night, Dad.”

“Good night, my dear son,” he had replied.

Left alone he had sat puzzling for a while over the meaning of what

THE LONG LOTO

687

Mark had said. Did he mean more or less than the words coBtained? Who
knew? So different was this world from that in which he himself had grown
up that the heart even of his son was strange to him. Mark was set upon
a solitary path and in spite of ail the yearning of his elders, he had to tread
the way alone.

The minister was proclaiming the closing hymn. What the sermon had
been about Edward did not know. He had not heard a word of it. But the
familiar words of the hymn fell on his ears and resounded with memory.
“Lead, Kindly Light, amid th’ encircling gloom.” It had been his father’s
favorite hymn. He stood up, holding one side of the hymnbook with Mar-
garet. He never sang, having no ear for music, but he liked to hear her
clear voice singing. She had sung to their babies in the nursery, though
when Mark had been bom he had been compelled to remind her, so that
Mark would not miss the memory of falling to sleep wrapped in the
music of his mother’s voice. She had been half ashamed and half laughing.
“You see how much too old I am to have this baby,” she had told him,
pretending to pout. But she had been lovely to his eyes all over again,
because he had forgotten how she looked, holding a baby in her arms,
rocking and singing. Queer how they used to say a mother shouldn’t rock a
child! Margaret had rocked theirs because she liked to, flouting the books
and doctors, and yet the other day from a manuscript that came into his
ofl5ce from some psychologist, he learned that after all it was the right
thing to rock little babies and sing to them, to pick them up when they
cried. He was glad he had always picked up Mark when he cried, and glad
for the nights he had sat with him through thunderstorms until he was a
big boy.

The benediction was over and he and Margaret went out of the church,
greeting their friends as usual. Fioretta was a Catholic and she took Tom
and the children with her to mass, early mass this morning probably,
dragging them out of their sleep so that she would have plenty of time in
the kitchen to prepare the huge meal that he shrank from even in con-
templation. His digestion was healthy but delicate.

The sun was hotter than ever when they came out to the sloping lawn.
On the horizon over Chedbury below them evil-looking clouds were loom-
ing. There would be a thunderstorm later in the afternoon, and then the
night would be cool.

He paused, looking down over the green, and then feeling strangely
weary he sat down for a moment on the mass of rock outside the church
door. The rock had been the subject of argument and controversy in town
meeting more than once. Some of the citizens of Chedbury wanted it dy-
namited and carried away, but he and others had opposed this stoutly.
Gray and lichen covered, ihe huge mass had been here in the time of Ched-
bury’s first settlers. He preferred it to grass. There was something symbolic
about rock in New England. It lent character even to the church.

At the end of the war he had been inspired by an idea. He still felt

688

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

it was an inspiration. Instead of the pretentious shaft of marble upon the
green as a, memorial to the twelve Chedbury hoys who had been killed in
Europe and in Asia, he had suggested a heavy bronze plate sunk into this
rock. Ghedbury folk had doubted so unconventional an idea, but the min-
ister had pushed it through.

wonderful conception,” he had declared in town meeting. “‘There's
something eternal about rock.”

The grocer had finally cast the deciding vote, won by the fact that a
bronze plate cost next to nothing. Edward turned his head to read again
the twelve names. John Carosi’s son headed the list, ““John Brown Garosi,
aged nineteen.” He remembered Jack as a lively small boy, squeezing his
way between the presses to find his father and beg for a nickel.

““Aren’t you well?” Margaret asked.

““Quite well,” he replied, lying a little. He got up and they walked slowly
down the sidewalk that bordered the green, circling it to the white house
at the foot.

The sun poured sultry into the yard, but the old trees cast a heavy shade
and they walked in silence toward the door. A croquet game was going
on in the back yard and they heard the children screaming over the wickets.

““I believe the bees are out,” Margaret said.

““They are thought to be fretful when a thunderstorm is coming,” he
replied.

So heavy was his sense of doom as he mounted the steps slowly that
he wondered if he, like old Tom Seaton, was to die by a stroke. The front
door was open and the house was strangely quiet. Where was Fioretta
and where was Tom?

He stood for a moment looking into the shadows of the wide hall. Then
he saw Tom and knew that doom had fallen. Tom stood at the wall tele-
phone, the receiver in his hand, his face white and stiff. He hung the
receiver upon the hook, and came toward them slowly.

““That was for you, Ed. A telegram. Brace yourself. It’s about Mark.”

They stared at him, two aging parents.

“‘He crashed,” Tom said, ““coming in from Berlin.”

His first feelmg, stupid with grief, was one of envy. He wished that he
could wail aloud as Fioretta was wailing. She stood in the kitchen door,
holding her big white apron to her face, sobbing. It would help him if
Margaret could weep aloud. But she, too, could not weep.

She sat down on the carved chest beside the stair. He leaned against the
wall. Tom repeated the bare words of official regret, as he could remember
them.

““Hank wanted to t5q)e it out but there was nobody to send, since it’s
Sunday. He’ll drop it in the mail.”

““I’ll go around and get it,” Edward said quietly. He felt suddenly strong
and alert.

THE' LONG LOVE

689

' : *T1! fetch m

*'Let me come/' Margaret begged. She turned to Fioretta. ‘*My dear,
give the children their diiiuer. Don’t let it be spoiled for them.”

“I can’t eat a bite/' Fioretta sobbed.

But she would eat, he knew. She would eat and cry at the same time.
He never wanted to eat again. His stomach felt shriveled and dry. But he
held himself straight as usual and Margaret slipped her hand into his
elbow while Tom whirled the car out of the garage.

They drove in silence through the humid sunshine toward the small rail-
road station where Hank Parker, the station master, received telegrams.
The station was empty. Hank stood behind the window in his shirt sleeves,
his eyes shaded by a piece of green paper held under his cap. He looked
at them sorrowfully from behind the thin iron bars.

“I’d ha’ given a million not to have got this,” he said simply. He pushed
the yellow slip of paper between the bars and Edward took it. He held it
for Margaret to read with him and Tom waited, his face red and grave.

There was nothing told in the bare words except the monstrous fact.
How it had come about he must wait to know. Mark, who had never had
an accident, his genius son, was dead. He had an unutterable longing to
get home, into his own house.

*Thank you. Hank,” he managed to say. “We’ll have to learn how to get
along somehow, now.”

“Folks have had to,” Hank said. He scratched his ear with his pencil.

“Yes,” Margaret said. “Plenty of folk have had to.”

“Let’s go home,” Edward muttered.

“Please, Tom,” Margaret said.

They climbed into the car again and Tom took them to their own gate.
“I wish to God there was something I could do,” he urged.

“There’s nothing, of course,” Edward said.

“You might tell a few people,” Margaret said. “You’ll know the right
ones. Ask them not to call us up for a bit”

“I will,” he promised.

They watched him drive away and then they walked wearily along the
brick path between the two rows of flaming scarlet tulips. They mounted
the steps and opened the door and shut it again. The house was empty.
Even the servants were gone on a Sunday afternoon. He had never im-
agined such terrifying stillness. He turned to Margaret and caught her in his
arms and together they began to weep.

It was Lewis Harrow, strangely, who gave him his first comfort. The
amazing ineptitude of people who sought to assuage his sorrow made him
ashamed for their sakes and he found himself coming to their aid with his
utmost efforts. “Yes,” he said, “I know-God’s will is inscrutable. . • . Yes,
it is good that we have our other children— and of course our grandcMldxen.

690

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

. . . Of course,” fee agreed, 'life is difficult today for tfee young. Perfeaps
Mark is spared a gi*eat deal.”

Josepfe Barclay to pray witfe feim, first alone and tfeen witfe
Margaret. Margaret bowed feer bead, feer face wfeite and still, feer bands
clasped on her knees.

She bad the wisdom not to try to comfort him, and be did not try to
comfort her. For them there was no comfort— not yet Together they
reached the ultimate in pain, and dimly he began to perceive that of
all the divisions among people, the deepest and the most universal is that
abyss which lies between those who have suffered the ultimate in pain
and those who have not. Those who had suffered spoke few words, but
the clasp of their hands upon his was strong and warm.

He held his daughter Mary in his arms and let her sob, knowing that she,
too, understood nothing yet of sorrow. “Don’t cry, my dear,” he said al-
most pleasantly. “You have a responsibility toward life, you know. You
mustn’t forget that.”

The hardest comfort of all was from those who tried to find meaning in
Mark’s death. He loved Joseph Barclay because he was not one of these.
When he prayed, the minister had said, “I could tell you this is God’s will
but I don’t believe it is. I could point out to you that Mark died while he
was taking food to those who had been his enemies, but we know they
weren’t his enemies and never had been, his or ours. He was taking food
to the Germans so that they wouldn’t turn Communist. Maybe that will
prove worth dying for, but I can’t promise you that it will.”

“Joe, you are a man of God, and now I know it,” Edward had replied.

It was Harrow who came flying back across the Atlantic bringing com-
fort. Upon receiving Mary’s cable he had flown straight to Germany, slash-
ing his way through red tape, more arrogant than any officer, inquiring of
them all if they knew who he was.

“By God, I’m the most famous writer in the United States,” he shouted,
furrowing his thick black brows. “What I can write about you and where
I can publish it would surprise you I” By such totalitarian methods he had
forced his way to the scene of Mark’s death.

Once home again, he rushed from the landing field to Chedbury and
went straight to the house, where he found Edward and Margaret walking
in the garden after the food they had tried to eat at midday.

“I’ve come as soon as I could,” he announced. “I knew you’d want to
know exactly what happened. I went to find out and I think I got it all.”

“Come inside, Lew,” Edward said.

“Dear Lewis,” Margaret said and took his hand. “How did you know
what we wanted?”

“My damned intuition, I suppose,” he retorted. They were in the empty
living room. Margaret had made it as pretty as usual with her flowers.
Baynes and Sandra had come, of course, and most of Chedbury had
streamed quietly through the door. That was over now. Edward had not

THE LONG^ LOVE

691

allowed even Tommy and Sandy to stay. He wanted to be alone' with
Margaret, They were face to face with the days, one after another.

Harrow sat down. He flung off his topcoat as though it stifled him.
The weather had turned cool again, after the frightful thunderstorm on
the Sunday they had first heard Mark was dead. ■ ■

Harrow leaned forward, his big ugly mouth working, his dark hair
straight on his forehead.

“I wish to God I could tell you something wonderful,” he said. ‘T wish
Mark had died saving somebody or something. But there isn’t anything
wonderful. He was simply part of the machine. The planes leave every few
minutes from the American zone and fly over the border into the Russian
zone. It’s not easy because of the hours and the Russians’ potshots, and
sometimes the weather. It’s round-the-clock stuff. The planes keep in line—
every few minutes. If they can’t land at the receiving end for some reason
or other they just fly back to where they started from and get in line again
and start over. That’s what Mark did. Something must have been wrong
with his plane and he didn’t dare to land and so he just went back to the
starting place and tried to come down there. A ground man said he saw
one of the wheels roll away, and then Mark crashed nose down into the earth
and his plane began to burn.”

“Was— his body— destroyed?” He put the question which he saw in Mar-
garet’s eyes.

“No— injured, of course. But it’s in a coflSn. I arranged for that. It’ll be
over— in due course. You know In due course’? Hah!” Lewis snorted and
looked away out of the window. He said roughly, “If you have the sense
I hope you have, you won’t open the coffin. Just have a nice funeral.”

He sighed enormously and got to his feet. “I wish I knew how to say
things to you, but I don’t. There’s no sense to anything, I guess.”

He lumbered toward the door and Margaret stopped him.

“Lew, my dear.”

He turned.:

Her face, wet with tears, was shining and tender. “Has Mary told you?”

“Told me what?” he demanded. “I only bad the cable about Mark. I’ve
been rushing around too much for letters.”

“Then let me tell you,” Margaret said. “Mary won’t mind-for my com-
fort. She’s going to have a baby. Lew, you’re going to have another little
chfld.”

He stared at her for a moment and then rushed to her and fell upon his
knees before her. “I worship you,” he muttered. “Ed, I worship this wife
of yours!”

“So do I,” Edward said. “So do L”

They sat quietly looking at each other when he had gone. They smiled
at each other. Once or twice he thought he might try to put into words how
for him their love had passed now into something transcendental, some-

692

AMERICAN TRIPTYCH

thing crystal and clear, like light enfolding them both. Life they knew and
now death .they knew, and nothing could separate them, not time and. not
eternity.

felt nnntterably' weary, yet. not spent. Looking into her face, he un™
derstood that she, too, felt as he did. They needed something to renew
their bodies, that the spirit which dwelled in them both might live.

“Shall I fetch a little of Fioretta’s wine?” he asked.

Fioretta, longing to be of use to them, had sent a jug of her homemade
wine.

“That would be nice,” Margaret said. She leaned back in her chair and
folded her hands on her knees. He went to her and knelt before her and
kissed her hands. She leaned forward and took Ms head between her
palms and kissed his forehead and then his lips.

“Dear love,” she said, “bring a little bread with the wine.”

He went away to bring that for which she had asked. He poured the
wine into an old amber glass pitcher that had once been his mother’s. She
had poured milk from it when he was a boy. Now he filled it with the wine.
He took a loaf from the breadbox of yellow painted tin and broke it upon a
silver tray and putting two wine glasses too on the tray, he carried every-
thing back to the living room. There he poured the wine and gave it to her,
and he poured his own and he passed her the bread and they ate and drank.

When they had finished, Margaret took the cups and set them on the tray,

“Now that we know everytMng,” she said, “now that we know there is
no use in trying to understand, shall we go out into the garden, Ned?”

“Yes, let us go,” he said. “It looks as though the sunset would be
splendid.”

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